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The Bible : 



ITS TRUE CHARACTER AND SPIRITUAL 
MEANING. 



REV. L. P. MERCER, 

UKION SWEDENBORGIAN CHURCH, CHICAGO. 



Without a Parable spake He not unto them— Matt, xiii, 34. 



I! J :■ 



CHICAGO : 
JANSEN, McCLURG & COMPANY. 

1870. 



THE LIBRARY 

or congress! 

WASHINGTON! 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S7U, oy 

L. P. MERCER, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



STEREOTYPED, PRINTED AND BOUND 



THE CHICAGO LEGAL NEWS COMPANY. 



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PREFACE 



The object of these Lectures is to present 
the teaching of Swedenborg concerning the 
Sacred Scriptures, in a form likely to reach 
those who mi^ht otherwise remain in ignorance 
of it; and for this purpose I have used what- 
ever in the collateral writings of the New 
Church I have found available for argument 
or illustration. Whatever has thus been as- 
similated into the scheme and purpose of this 
presentation,! of course make myself responsi- 
ble for; but if credit is to be given, I wish to 
say it very likely belongs to others. It is 
only fair to add, that the Lectures, delivered 
from time to time, wdiich have appeared in the 
Chicago Times, called forth expressions of 
interest from various sources, which suggested 
the probable usefulness of printing them in this 

present form. 

L. P. M. 
Chicago, Advent, 1879. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. THE BIBLE A BOOK OF DIVINE PARABLES . 5 

Man Needs a Revelation .... 9 

It Must Contain a Spiritual Sense . . 12 
The Claim of the Sculptures . . .11 

The Testimony of Tradition . . • 18 

II. THE DOCTRINE OF CORRESPONDENCE: A 

KEY TO DIVINE PARABLES ... 27 

The Need of some Key . . . . 29 

The Law of Correspondence Stated . . 33 

Its Application Illustrated ... 42 

III. THE LAW OF DIVINE INSPIRATION . . 55 

The Inspiration Common to All . . 57 
The Inspiration of Prophets and Evan- 
gelists . 65 

The Inspiration of the Writing . . 66 

The Power of the Word thus Inspired . 71 



(i) 



2 CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

IV. THE HISTORY OF REVELATION ... 80 

The History of Revelation the History 
of the Church . . . . . .81 

The Meaning of Creation .... 86 

The Adamic Church . , . 92 

The Noetic Church . . . . 95 

The Preparation for the Incarnation . 100 

The Incarnation. 104 

The Gospel and the Second Advent . . 108 

V. TEE REAL AND APPARENT IN THE SCRIP- 

TURES 118 

The Principle of Adaptation . • .120 
Apparent Contradictions .... 123 
The Wars of the Jews ..... 142 

VI. THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE : 

AN ANSWER TO SKEPTICAL OBJECTIONS 158 

The Churches Need It 161 

General Answer to Skepticism . • . 175 
The Question of Authenticity . . . 179 
The Mythical Element in Scripture . 182 
The Morality of Scripture .... 188 
The Real Infallibility . . • .191 



! 



TRUE CHARACTER OF THE BIBLE. 



THE BIBLE. 
I. 

A BOOK OF DIVINE PABABLES. 

Without a parable spate he not unto them.— Matt, xiii: 34. 

A parable involves two distinct series of 
ideas ; one pertaining to principles, the other 
to persons and things. The power of the par- 
able lies in this, that its distinct series of ideas 
are related as man's faculties of abstract and 
sensuous thought are related. It is a series of 
spiritual ideas clothed in a series of natural in- 
cidents, which by their dramatic force fix the 
interest and enlist the sympathies, and yield 
their inner meaning in the ratio of man's as- 
cending thought. As the mind is indrawn 
from sensuous to spiritual thought, the narra- 
tive loses its incidental character, and becomes 
simply the mirror in which is presented the 
image of spiritual principles and their rela- 
tions. The distinctness of this image will be 

(5) 



6 DIVINE PAYABLES. 

in the ratio of man's growing wisdom ; and 
meanwhile the picture itself is vivified by the 
principle personified or the truth embodied. 
Thus it is that the parable speaks at once to 
the child and the philosopher ; and as the in- 
dividual ascends the steps of maturer wisdom 
its meaning opens to his expanding conscious- 
ness. The divine parable of the Prodigal is 
to the child, who hears it first at his mother's 
knee, a simple story, presenting a vivid pic- 
ture of personal history ; the youth learns to 
regard it as history teaching by example ; the 
man perceives that the historical form is only 
an investiture assumed for the purpose of illus- 
tration ; and yet, throughout this process, the 
spiritual interest of the story is developing in 
clearness, till finally the image of the father- 
hood, forgiveness and providence of Divine 
love, which was not wholly absent from the 
child's first impressions, becomes supreme to 
the man's thought. 

Now, let us reflect whether it would make 
any difference in the value or intention of that 
parable if we were to find it recorded among 
the chronicles of the Jewish kings, or the his- 
tories of the Israelitish people. Transfer it to 
the book of Samuel, give names to the father 
and sons, think of it as a historical occurrence 



DIVINE PARABLES. 7 

and what is changed by the transference? The 
object and purpose of its insertion in the his- 
toric Word, were it found there, would still be 
the same as of its insertion in the Lord's dis- 
course. Its exquisite portraiture of the ten- 
derness of Divine love toward human way- 
wardness would be the same, and the same, 
too, the progressive development of its lessons 
to man's expanding consciousness. 

Has it never occurred to you that since the 
parables, with their spiritual contents, are so 
often historic in form, that therefore those nar- 
rations of the Holy Scriptures which are his- 
toric in form may be parables in reality, with 
an equally important spiritual significance ? 
The proud King Saul, head and shoulders 
above all the men of Israel, standing in fear 
with his armies before the giant of Gath, and 
finally delivered by the youthful David, the 
ruddy shepherd-boy from the fields of Beth- 
lehem — is it any less a parable than the story 
of the lost sheep> or the marriage of the king's 
son, in the Gospels ? The touching story of 
Absalom, caught by his hair in the branches 
of the oak, may be the veriest history, but it 
is no less a parable than the story of the Prod- 
igal. They contain the same elements, and 
serve the same ends ; they appeal to the hu- 



8 DIVINE PARABLES. 

manity of the simple and the spiritual intui- 
tions of the wise, and present their varied 
lessons to the varied sorts and conditions of 
men. 

I desire to commend to you this doctrine : 
That the Bible is a book of Divine Parables; 
its early portions are allegory ; its historical 
records a vast drama enacted by living men as 
types of spiritual things, with the redemption 
and regeneration of man for its subject. The 
advent of the Lord, His sufferings, His death, 
His gospel, can thus be seen to be in harmony 
with this drama, which embraces the Deity, 
and represents the states of every living soul. 
The Word, teaching us thus, becomes at once 
spiritual in its subject, in its importance, and 
in its style ; and is taken out of the arena of 
controversial criticism, and let out to the high- 
er faculties of man for investigation and devout 
contemplation. Simple as this doctrine is, 
catholic as it is to the wisest thought of the 
church in primitive and modern times, I am 
unwilling to trust it to the fate of a plausible 
conjecture, and, therefore, ask your attention 
to some of the evidences of its truthfulness. 

It must not be forgotten that the number of 
persons who feel themselves obliged to doubt 
whether the Bible is a revelation from God, 



DIVINE PARABLES. 9 

daily increases. There may be more than one 
such among you ; and while there are consid- 
erations which might be helpful to such minds, 
which I am obliged, by the limits of this dis- 
course, to omit, I wish it distinctly understood 
that I regard such doubts neither with disre- 
spect nor sentiments of hopeless pity. They 
seem to me, in a certain sense, natural to the 
time, and a necessary consequence of the de- 
clining spirituality of the doctrine and inter- 
pretation of the Church. The doctrine con- 
cerning the Inspiration of the Scriptures which 
is currently promulgated in this day is untrue; 
and interpretations are taught which it were 
better to disbelieve. But because the Ptole- 
maic astronomy is exploded, is there no longer 
a solar system and a starry heaven? Surely, 
the rejection of a false theory of revelation 
need not necessarily lead to denial of the exis- 
tence of revelation. It should rather turn the 
mind to investigation, and dispose it affirma- 
tively toward the doctrine which announces 
more rational claims. 

1. I begin then with recalling a truth which 
seems to be well based in human experience ; 
Marts religious instincts lead him to hole for 
and seek a revelation from God. The con- 
sciousness of a mind and life which is an enig- 



10 DIVINE PARABLES. 

ma to himself; the universal intuition of God, 
which no man loses till it is blanketed by his 
own fallacious reasonings ; these two felt facts 
call for revelation from God to man concern- 
ing himself, and God's will with respect to 
him. There are powers and faculties of the 
human mind w 7 hich are not brought into exer- 
cise by an exclusive determination of thought 
to this world of the senses, which will exercise 
themselves with the problems of existence, and 
duty, and destiny. These faculties may be 
more or less developed, but at every stage of 
their activity they demand a knowledge differ- 
ent from that which the senses can give. They 
feel their fitness for a world of thought which 
the senses do not dirctly open, and they crave 
its revelation. The skeptic as to the inspira- 
tion of the Scriptures, if he have still preserved 
the intuition of God and the hope of immor- 
tality, will tell you how much he desires a rev- 
elation in which heart and mind may repose, 
with confidence and certainty. Many a mind 
chased by the phantoms of doubt; many a 
heart tired of following after the fantasies of 
sense, is crying to-day in your very midst: 
" As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, 
so panteth my soul after thee, O God." Even 
atheism acknowledges the want in ceaseless 



DIVINE PARABLES. 11 

attempts and incessant activity to disprove it. 
Men do not raise armies and keep incessant 
watch and ward against nothing ; and the 
very struggle which unbelief keeps up from 
age to age, is virtually an acknowledgment that 
the human heart needs, yearns for, and is capa- 
ble of believing in, a Divine Revelation. 

2. Now reflect that the Sacred Scriptures 
claim to be such a revelation, and from age to 
age have made good their claim to countless 
multitudes. It is sometimes denied, I know; 
but so is the rotundity of the earth, and so is 
the beauty of art denied by those who have no 
eye, and the grandeur of music by those who 
have no ear, and the blessedness of brotherhood 
by those who have no love. The facts remain; 
over all the Scriptures is written the name of 
them, like the name on the vesture of Him 
whom John saw in vision, "The Word of 
God." It is the distinct and specific claim of 
Moses, and the prophets, and the Evangelists, 
that God spake unto them, and that what they 
have written is His Word. The claim is plain- 
ly there; it is either true or it is not. I con- 
fess a great deal of respect for the old argu- 
ment that the effect of these Scriptures upon the 
mind and life of the disciple is strong presump- 
tion in favor of their claim. Those who are 



12 DIVINE PARABLES. 

really affected by the Scriptures perceive in 
them a power far transcending that which is 
felt in any other writing, and such facts of ex- 
perience are not to be ignored. The simple 
literal meaning of a verse by no means accounts 
for the impression it may produce. There are 
religious faculties in us all, that respond with 
fear or hope to the statutes and commands, the 
warnings and promises of Holy Scripture, even 
though intellectually we profess to believe them 
the product of men in past time ; there is a 
Divine power in them which has asserted itself 
to every generation for ages. 

3. Consider, then, in view of what the 
Scriptures claim to be, the Word of God, whether 
they can possibly be such without containing 
the mind of God in spiritual truths utterly 
distinct from that which appears in the gram- 
matical construction of the letter. It must be 
admitted that a large part of the Bible claim- 
ing to be the Word of God, is not the Word 
of God to us unless indeed it be uttered in para- 
ble and contain secrets within its bosom ready 
to be unfolded to the teachable mind. But could 
any of it be the Word of God without a spir- 
itual sense within the letter? Kationally it is 
impossible to conceive of a Divine truth descend- 
ing into the language of men, and taking to 



DIVINE PARABLES. 13 

itself an expression in such language without 
the mediation not of one only but of many 
distinct series of ideas. If the Scriptures 
really treated in their letter in all its parts 
of love and faith, of the Divine Character and 
human duty, of that which bears directly upon 
man's spiritual life, and those subjects concern- 
ing which alone he needs a revelation, it is in- 
conceivable that such teaching could be given 
by God to man without containing spiritual 
arcana, distinct from the series of natural ideas 
composing the letter. Every writing has the 
author in it ; all that there is in his mind con- 
cerning the subject is involved, and possible 
therefore to be evolved. Thought clothes it- 
self in speech ; and abstract intellectual truth 
clothes itself with the images of sensuous 
thought before it can put on a garment of lan- 
guage. All our ideas are derived in the first 
instance from impressions of phenomena ; and 
the images of these become not only the 
basis of subsequent thoughts, but their ap- 
propriate sign and expression. Our intellec- 
tual conceptions, which are born on the one 
side of sensuous impressions, must on the other 
hand think themselves out, or clothe them- 
selves with sensuous images, before they can 
find expression. How then shall truth divine, 



14 DIVINE PARABLES. 

transcending the faculties of sense, communi- 
cate itself in the language of men without first 
investing itself with angelic ideas, and then 
with corresponding natural images ? The ob- 
ject of such a communication beins: to make 
known things which "eye hath not seen, nor 
ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of 
man to conceive/' the human mind w r ould be 
incapable of apprehending them, except 
through the medium of sensuous representa- 
tives and corresponding signs. The language 
of a Divine Revelation must, therefore, from 
the nature of its message, be parabolic. Even 
its natural images of moral righteousness can 
be only images of spiritual graces and Divine 
perfections. But much of the letter of Scrip- 
ture treats of specific events, and is limited in 
its application to the occasion past. It does 
not treat of such subjects as man needs to have 
revealed. How then can it be the Word of 
God, as it claims, unless it is also, as it claims, 
"settled forever in the heavens?" — unless it 
contains an internal meaning which is appre- 
hensible to angelic intelligence, or spiritual 
thought? Possessing at least two distinct 
series of ideas, as it must thus do to be the 
Word of God, it is parabolic in reality, and 
spiritual in its object, and eternal in its inter- 



DIVIDE PARABLES. 15 

est. Whether couched in the form allegory, 
history, precept, or prophecy, the Word must 
have the regeneration of man for its one great 
object. The variety of its immediate subjects 
must have been selected as adapted to its sin- 
gle object, the spiritual instruction of man- 
kind ; and, therefore, whether its form be al- 
legory or history, must be determined by the 
adaptability of one or the other to secure the 
attention and fix the interest of men in time, 
but whether one or the other, it must contain 
the secrets of spiritual wisdom in truths which 
could not be spoken without a parable. 

This we believe, that the Word of the Lord 
is so written, and that the Bible is thus a book 
of Divine Parables, plenarily inspired by vir- 
tue of the informing wisdom through which 
as a medium, the very spirit of God vivifies 
even the letter of its myths, its histories, its 
statutes and its promises. Its inspiration and 
divineness are not acquired by the miraculous 
mode of its composition, and have nothing to 
do with the infallibility of its science, or its 
history, or the personal purity of its charac- 
ters; but by the indwelling spirit of God, and 
Divine spiritual truth from Him. The inspi- 
ration of the writers of the Scriptures was tem- 
porary, and for a specific purpose; the inspi- 



10 DIVINE PARABLES. 

ration of that which was written is eternal. 
It is the indwelling mind of God and Divine 
truth from Him in all its gradations. It is 
this eternal and perpetual inspiration of truth 
in the Scriptures themselves which constitutes 
them the Word of God; which makes them 
reach bevond the necessities of the occasion on 
which they were given ; and by virtue of which 
they furnish food for the angels in heaven as 
well as men on earth. The Word in its " be- 
ginnings " or first principles, is " with God " 
and " is God ; " but to make itself apprehen- 
sible to finite minds, it must clothe itself with 
garments woven from the fibers of angelic and 
human thought, constituting a spiritual and 
a natural sense, to suit the states respectively 
of angels and of men. 

When men on earth rejected Him who was 
the Word made flesh, they divided His coat, 
and found a vesture woven from the top 
throughout without a seam. This essential 
Word appearing as the Son of Man, clothed 
with an inner garment, and over this an outer 
robe, pieced and seamed, represents the Word 
which is the Divine truth itself, clothed in the 
vesture of angelic wisdom, which constitutes the 
spiritual sense of our written Bible, and over 
this the outer garment of its letter, pieced from 



DIVINE PARABLES. 17 

the contributions of human myth and history, 
that could serve the "Word of life for clothing. 
And like the Lord's vesture, which it really is, 
the inner spiritual sense of the Word is woven 
throughout without a seam ; while men dispute 
and divide the letter, the vesture of angelic 
w T isdom constitutes one harmonious serial and 
continuous garment of light. Amid all the 
difficulties which beset literal criticism and the 
doubts which overhang natural thought, this 
glorious fabric of spiritual truth awaits man's 
faculty of perception. It may appear with 
greater or less clearness as men are more or less 
instructed concerning it. The more spiritual- 
ly-minded the reader the deeper and fuller will 
be his perception of such spiritual signification. 
The deeps in his own soul will answ r er back to 
the deeps in God's word. Space and time and 
person will recede in the contemplation of Holy 
Scripture, and spiritual principles, and states, 
and progression of state will become the subjects 
of thought. He who thus looks in God's Word 
for that which is the subject of faith, can real- 
ize its histories in his own mental progressions. 
He may learn the stages of his regeneration in 
the story of creation ; the Divine evolution of 
spiritual faculties, affections and thoughts, from 
the chaos of the natural mind. He can read 
2 



18 DIVINE PAHABLES. 

the processes of his Spiritual growth in the 
journey of Israel ; be instructed by the Law 
in his pilgrimage, and enter the heavenly 
Canaan under the leadership of a higher 
Joshua. A greater than David can give him 
the possession of Mount Zion ; and a more 
glorious King than Solomon build within him a 
more glorious temple. 

4. I ask now your attention to the testimony 
of Scripture , mid the tradition of the Church, 
to the truth of this doctrine. The present 
troubles of dogmatic orthodoxy have arisen 
from ignoring the primitive doctrine of the 
Word, and insisting upon its literal sufficiency 
and infallibility, unmindful of the numerous 
instances in the Bible in which that Word is 
asserted to be figurative, typical, a collection 
of parables. 1. We continually find the 
Scriptures themselves in their very letter, 
directing the reader to elevate his mind above 
the merely literal expression — above the nat- 
ural ideas and images which compose its out- 
ward language, and to explore the truly Divine 
wisdom that is contained within. "Open Thou 
mine eyes, that I may behold the wondrous 
things out of thy law." "The law of the 
Lord is perfect; converting the soul." Per- 
fect in the infinitude of its significance; and 



DIVINE PARABLES. 19 

the universality of its adaptability to man's 
need! Worthy of God and suited to man! 
"Give ear, My people, to My law; incline 
your ear to the words of My mouth. I will 
open My mouth in a parable ; I will utter 
dark sayings of old." Then follows the sum- 
mary of the history of Israel; and what must 
we infer if not that the whole history is one 
vast parable; that it was overruled by Divine 
Providence so that it might be a parable; that 
because it was such a parable it was therefore 
written; that because parabolic of spiritual 
things it has been preserved ; that because 
those spiritual things have permanence and re- 
lation to ourselves they may therefore be opened 
to us? " History is philosophy teaching by ex- 
ample/' says Napoleon ; but this is more. It is 
spiritual philosophy teaching by symbols — a Di- 
vine drama; God the arranger of the types, His 
object the spiritual instruction of His children, 
the tribes of Israel and their enemies only the 
dramatis personce on the natural stage of ex- 
terior life, playing symbolic parts, and leaving 
their memories and their deeds pregnant types 
for universal man. A literal people, repre- 
senting the spiritual people of God ; their his- 
tory, the progressions, trials and conflicts, the 
triumphs and failures of the soul. " It is the 



20 DIVINE PARABLES. 

spirit that quickeneth (saith the Lord); the 
flesh profiteth nothing; the words I speak 
unto you, they are spirit and they are life." 
" O fools and slow of heart to believe (he said,) 
ought not Christ to have suffered these things 
and to enter into His glory? And beginning 
at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded 
to them in all the Scriptures the things con- 
cerning Himself." 2. The Apostles recog- 
nized this character of Holy Scripture. They 
declare that the deluge, the ark, and Noah 
and his sons, are "figures," types ; the " Jews 
after the flesh " were but types of the " Jews 
after the Spirit;" the tabernacle and its cere- 
monies were but "symbols of the true;" Jerusa- 
lem below the type " of Jerusalem that is 
above, the mother of us all ;" the earthly Zion 
the figure of the " Mount Zion, that city of 
the living God, the Heavenly Jerusalem ;" 
Abraham and his two sons were " an allego- 
ry ;" Melchisedec the type of Christ, and so 
were the high priests. 3. The Fathers in the 
primitive church developed the idea to great 
lengths. Mosheim, himself an opponent of 
allegorical interpretation, is compelled to con- 
fess that it was predominant in the early cen- 
turies of the church. 

Indeed, no truth of history is more certain 




DIVINE PARABLES. 21 

than this : that for fourteen hundred years few 
who received the Scriptures at all ever thought 
of denying that they contain mysteries in their 
bosom, which do not appear upon their sur- 
face. In the first three centuries the men 
most renowned for piety and erudition "all 
attributed a double sense to the words of Scrip- 
ture, the one obvious and literal, the other hid- 
den and mysterious, which lay concealed as it 
were under the veil of the outward letter. 
The former they treated with the utmost neg- 
lect, and turned the whole force of their genius 
and application to unfold the latter." In the 
following ages of the church it is true that 
some were dissatisfied with the interpretations 
which had been given by others, but the ex- 
istence of a spiritual sense was not denied, 
nor the principle of allegorical interpretation 
abandoned. It prevailed with such constancy 
and predominance, down even to the fifteenth 
century, as to justify Bishop Home in stating 
" that such spiritual method did universally 
prevail in the church from the beginning" 
The value of such figurative interpretations as 
were thus furnished to the church is not the 
matter on which I would insist, but the cath- 
olicity of the doctrine of " a double sense." In 
proportion as this doctrine is denied, faith in 



22 DIVINE PARABLES. 

the inspiration of Scripture has declined. In 
the ratio of men's belief that the literal sense 
of Scripture is its only sense, have they denied 
that it is the Word of God. If it contains no 
Divine and spiritual sense distinctly within the 
letter, large portions of it cannot be Divine in 
any sense. Its mistakes in science and his- 
tory destroy its claims to infallibility as sci- 
ence and history ; its contradictions are incon- 
sistent with its divine origin, except there be 
an underlying harmony ; and much of it is so 
obscure in its figures as to elude all the laws 
of rhetorical interpretation. The fundamental 
principle of modern Biblical criticism is, that 
" Scripture, like other books, has one meaning 
— the meaning which it had to the mind of the 
Prophet or Evangelist," and "no second or hid- 
den sense different from that which appears upon 
the surface." From which it follows : 1. That 
it has no Divine sense at all, unless that be the 
same as human sense. 2. That much of the 
only sense which is contained in Scripture is 
non-sense. This is very different from the 
faith of St. Paul, who says, " our sufficiency is 
of God, who also hath made us able ministers 
of the New Testament; not of the letter, but 
of the spirit; for the letter killeth, but the 
spirit giveth life." The Fathers followed a 



DIVINE PARABLES. 23 

better principle when they said, " the law of 
God is spiritual, and they have not the true 
law who do not take it spiritually ; " and 
" that the true meaning of the sacred writers 
was to be sought in the sense which is within 
the letter." 

In the development of this subject, I should 
be obliged next to present and consider the 
chief objection to the admission of a spiritual 
sense of the Scriptures, namely, the absence of 
uniformity among the interpreters ; the great 
danger of vagaries of our own being foisted 
upon or pretendedly drawn from them — the 
lack of any rule of consistent interpretation. 
It must be borne in mind, however, that this 
objection applied with equal force to the gos- 
pel parables themselves, which are commonly 
esteemed to be the most perfect form of Divine 
teaching. It no more applies to the difficulties 
and dangers of spiritually interpreting the 
narratives, which are historical in form and 
parabolic in reality, than it does to those con- 
fessed parables which are the matchless mir- 
rors of spiritual wisdom. The difference is 
only one of degree, not of kind. The objec- 
tion, however, is a valid one, and if the spirit- 
ual sense of Holy Scripture dwells in its histo- 
ries as in its parables, there must be some law 



24 DIVINE PARABLES. 

of its inhabitation, which being known, would 
serve as a rule of accurate interpretation. 

We must leave the subject here at this time, 
with a promise. In my next lecture I shall 
endeavor to show that there is an exact law of 
Correspondence between spiritual principles and 
natural phenomena ; that in this law all lan- 
guage has its origin and all symbolism its ex- 
planation ; that the Scriptures are divinely 
given in accordance with it, and the knowl- 
edge of the law becomes a key to their heavenly 
secrets. 

Meanwhile, I wish to leave with you, if I 
may, an impression of the importance just now 
of determining the world's thought, away from 
the sensual criticism that can never enlighten 
but only confuse and extinguish faith. It 
seems to me of the utmost importance that 
faith in the plenary divine inspiration of the 
Scriptures should be established in reason and 
based in intelligence ; and I admit indeed that 
this can never be realized till the old natural- 
istic doctrine of historical and literal infallibil- 
ity is destroyed ; and I admit further, that his- 
torical criticism is rapidly and effectually ac- 
complishing that result. But when you have 
razed your old crazy habitation you have not 
built your new home. There is positive as 



DIVINE PARABLES. 25 

well as negative work to be done; construction 
must follow upon destruction. And it seems 
to me time that men were encouraged to build 
a positive faith in spiritual truth as revealed 
from the Lord. Such a structure of faith can 
only be permanent, indeed, as it is found- 
ed upon rational doctrine; but a first and pres- 
ently important exercise is the determination 
of thought to divine ideals. Leaving those 
things which are behind, press forward to those 
things which are before ; reach out to those 
grand universal spiritual truths which shine 
with the clearness of the day-spring in nu- 
merous places through the veil of the written 
Word, and resting in these, search for their 
illustration in the disguises of Scripture history 
and prophecy and song. Jewish history and 
Mosaic cosmogony is unworthy of your immor- 
tal vocation, but search rather for the wisdom 
of the Son of Man and the illustrations of spir- 
itual experience in the " parables " and " dark 
sayings of old." The trials of skepticism, the 
deeper skepticism which overwhelms the heart 
in the daily struggles of life when God seems 
a myth and Providence a cheat, the clouds of 
sense which close in upon us now and again 
like the shades of eternal night; these can only 
be dissipated by lifting our thought up into the 



26 DIVINE PARABLES. 

clearer air of spiritual contemplation and look- 
ing for divine instruction on the other side, that 
is, the inside of the Divine Parables of Eden, 
and Canaan, and Egypt, the history of Israel, 
the life of the Son of Man, and the vision of 
the Seer of Patmos. Believe me, that as the 
Scriptures are thus analyzed the function of 
criticism, important as it has been, will pale; 
and the obscurities of doubt, dark as they may 
be, will lift ; and the inquiries of faith, sincere 
as they are, will yet transcend what it hath en- 
tered into the heart of man to conceive. God 
and heaven close into these sacred parables, 
and as thought is determined from What is in- 
cidental and dead in itself, the gates will open 
into the heavenly places which reflect the coun- 
sels of God. Amen! 



II. 

THE DOOTRIKE OF CORRESPOND- 
ENCE : A KEY TO DIVINE 
PARABLES. 

Who is worthy to open the book and loose the seals thereof? 

—Rev. V : 2. 

Theee are two questions which must inevit- 
ably come to the front in the theological dis- 
cussions of the near future; one respecting 
the Person of God : the other the existence 
of a Word of God. In regard to the first, 
the old theistic argument may for a time be 
successfully opposed to speculative atheism, 
but it will never prove satisfactory to its advo- 
cates, because the God which it postulates is 
unknown. If there be a God, the first likely 
hypothesis is, that He shows Himself exactly 
to instruct mankind; and the aspiration of 
theism to a creed of God, must, in proportion 
as it is earnest, search for Him where per- 
haps He may be found, in those Scriptures 

which claim to be a revelation from Him. 

(27) 



28 LAW OF INTERPRETATION . 

Thus discussion must, ultimately, pass over to 
the question as to the existence of a Word of 
God ; and the real question here, is not as to 
the truth of the science or history in the Bible, 
but as to the existence of a Spiritual Sense 
from which it is divinely inspired and holy 
in every part. The Bible considered in its 
letter, and from its letter alone, does not 
justify the expectations which men have a 
right to base upon its claim. This hjts been 
clearly and repeatedly admitted in the past, 
and is the present boast of literal criticism. 
" If we who profess Christianity," said Dr. 
Wordsworth, " do not recognize the life-giving 
virtue of the Spirit in the Old Testament, we 
cannot expect to retain the letter of the Old 
Testament; we shall soon lose our belief in its 
unity, integrity, veracity and inspiration." 
The prediction has been verified. There is no 
intelligible and definite belief in either Old or 
New Testament as in any real sense the Word 
of God; neither indeed, can there be, unless 
the Bible be a book of Divine Parables con- 
taining a distinct series of spiritual truths re- 
lated to the ideas of the letter, as the soul of 
man to his earthly body. If this be denied in 
the Church, what it calls the Word of God 
must fall into the hands of the Critics, whose 



LAW OF INTERPRETATION. 29 

method is to wrap it in the grave-clothes of 
literalism, with the fragrant spices of a few 
fine compliments on its venerable character, "as 
the manner of the Jews is to bury." No ex- 
pedients can prevail to ward off this issue. In 
the " battle between the Word of God and the 
Critics" the real question should be distinctly 
presented. Does the Bible contain an internal 
spiritual sense distinct from the letter? If 
not, it will be taken away from the Church 
altogether; nothing can save it. If it does, 
there must be some law of its inhabitation, 
which being known would serve as a rule of 
accurate interpretation. 

"Without any sort of doubt, the master posi- 
tion in this controversy belongs to that doctrine 
which shall not merely assert the existence of 
a spiritual sense in the Bible, but prove itself 
able to expound it. The existence of a spirit- 
ual sense has been ably asserted in the past; 
but the want of an adequate and consistent 
rule of interpretation, the consequent liability 
to see ones own vagaries and fancies in the 
mirror of Scripture, and to mistake them for 
its genuine spiritual truths, has always been 
urged as an objection to the doctrine. The 
objection has indeed much force, unless it can 
be shown that there is a law of Inspiration 



30 LAW OF INTERPRETATION. 

which may be known and studied as a rule of 
interpretation. The results of the spiritual 
methods of interpretation which have more or 
less prevailed in the Church from the beginning, 
have been of unequal value, depending upon 
the clearness of the interpeter's perception. 
"These secrets of divine Scripture we trace out 
as we may/' confesses Augustine; "one more 
or less aptly than another, but as becomes 
faithful men holding this much for certain, 
that not without some kind of foreshadowing 
were these things done and recorded in the 
Word; and that to Christ only, and His church, 
the city of God, are they to be referred in every 
instance." Wanting a strict rule of interpre- 
tation these men were dependent upon their 
insight which was more or less clear in the 
ratio of their sympathy with divine and spirit- 
ual realities. Wonderful things they have 
seen indeed, almost justifying Ruskin's saying, 
that "the Seers of the world are greater than 
its thinkers." But if this be true at all, it 
must be true because there is a reality and 
order in what they "see," capable of being 
known, analyzed, and brought within the field 
of systematic thought. What poets and Seers 
perceive, the thinkers will doubtless sometime 
reduce to science and doctrine. All spiritual 



LAW OF INTERPRETATION'. 31 

interpretation of Scripture has assumed that 
there is an analogy between the visible and in- 
visible worlds; that "the systems of both worlds 
run parallel/' as says an old writer, " so that 
the realities in the superior have their respec- 
tive shadows in the inferior, arid are fitly repre- 
sented by them." The perception of this anal- 
ogy has heretofore depended upon the faculty 
of imagination and spiritual insight; but if it 
should be discovered that it is based in a law 
of creation, that it is accurate and susceptible 
of analysis, reducible in fact to the terms of 
rational thought, then would the study of the 
spiritual sense of the word be based in the 
clearest rational induction. 

This we affirm is discovered in the Science 
of Correspondence which is revealed for the 
Church, and by which it may be demon- 
strated that Holy Scripture is so written that 
each expression corresponds to a distinct 
spiritual idea, and that the series of these 
constitute its divine content and inspiring 
soul. 

There is a relation of some sort existing 
between the objects of the natural universe 
and the subjects of the spiritual universe, the 
things seen by man and the thoughts and 
affections of man. Of this the least reflect- 



32 LAW OF INTERPRETATION. 

ing must be convinced. While common sense 
looks at things, or visible nature, as real 
and final facts, imagination sees in them the 
reflection of our faculties and states of affec- 
tion and thought, and uses them as types or 
words for the expression of these. Man sees 
himself in the mirror of the world. He be- 
holds his cunning in the fox, his courage and 
daring in the lion, his innocence in the lamb 
and dove, his intelligence in the horse, his 
stubbornness, or as the case may be, his 
patient endurance, in the ass, his sensuality in 
the swine. It is as though each single faculty 
of his own mind, raying forth from him, 
had embodied itself as the characteristic fea- 
ture in some animal form; requiring thus the 
whole circuit of the animal kingdom to stand 
as the embodiment and representative of his 
affections. He beholds his changing moods 
in tree and flower, and the entire round of 
phenomena. Daylight and darkness, storm 
and calm, sunshine and cloud, have all their 
perfect counterpart in the changing states of 
the human soul, which, when it would de- 
scribe its own secret workings, points to these 
outward and visible movements of dumb 
nature as the most expressive symbols and 
shadows of itself. All language is based 



LA W OF INTEBPRETA TION. 33 

upon this intimate relation between the inner 
world of the human soul and the outer world 
of natural phenomena. Even the abstract 
terms of language, used purely to express the 
relations of intellectual ideas, are derived from 
names of sensible things and their relations. 
We see truth, we hear laws, we weigh argu- 
ments, we have mental tastes. We are in- 
flamed with passion, and chilled by antipathy; 
we warm to a subject, and are cool toward the 
disagreeable. We find reproaches cutting 
and bitter; our feelings are lacerated by sting- 
ing sarcasms, and we are melted into tenderness 
by soft compassion. What men value as 
substance has thus, as Emerson says, a greater 
value as symbol. "The whole world is thor- 
oughly anthropomorphised as though it had 
passed through the mind of man and taken 
his mold and form; the huge heavens and earth 
are but a web drawn around us, the light, 
skies and mountains, are but the painted vicissi- 
tudes of the soul." 

The doctrines of the New Church show that 
these relations and suggestions are founded, 
not in fancy but in fact, in a universal law of 
Creation. The law is this: that the whole 
scheme of sensible things is created by Divine 
Influx through the spiritual world; the beings 



34 LAW OF INTERPRETATION. 

and objects of the spiritual world standing 
thus in the position of mediate or secondary 
causes, which are imaged and represented in 
their effects. This relation between spiritual 
causes and natural effects we call " Correspond- 
ence;" anything in this world of the senses 
being said to "correspond" to the spiritual 
cause in the world of souls through which it is 
created or produced. I dislike exceedingly 
to import philosophical terms into popular 
discourse; but to grasp this idea with clear- 
ness and accuracy, the mind must carefully 
distinguish between discrete and continuous 
degrees. Current theology shuts its eyes to 
all such terms ; and current science makes no 
such distinction; and the expounders of both 
are likely to declare their indifference. But let 
him who would be wise learn to think accu- 
rately. There are continuous degrees which 
exhibit gradation on the same plane ; as greater 
or less degree of light, or heat, or pressure. 
So, likewise, there is greater or less degree of 
clearness in intelligence or understanding ; or 
greater or less facility of expression in speech. 
These degrees exhibit, however, only differ- 
ences of continuity on the same plane. But 
the degree which distinguishes the understand- 
ing from the speech is discrete and not con- 



LAW OF INTERPRETATION. 35 

tinuous. The thought does not shade off into 
the expression. It may be more or less clear 
on its own plane, and the expression may be 
more or less clear on its plane ; but the planes 
are distinct, and that which distinguishes 
them is a discreet degree. The thought decends 
into the speech and clothes itself, and takes on a 
new form and function on a lower plane of 
existance, without losing its own form and 
function in the mind itself. It is the efficient 
cause of which the speech is the effect. The 
thought is spiritual, the speech is natural. 
They belong to correlated planes of existence, 
which do not shade off one into the other, but 
are discrete and distinct. Such is the relation 
of a spiritual cause to its natural effect ; such 
the relation of the soul to the physical body ; 
and such the relation of the spiritual world 
to the natural world. The spiritual world 
is in the physical world, and principles 
are in phenomena, not as one box is in 
another, or an ether in a vessel, but as the 
soul is within the body ; corresponding part 
to part and function to function, yet wholly 
distinct and discrete as to their planes of exis- 
tence. Thus God creates the human soul as 
the recipient of His Divine love and wisdom, 
and beholds in it His image ; and through the 



36 LAW OF INTERPRETATION. 

soul, as a form receptive of His life, He creates 
the body, and in this again the soul beholds 
its image. But the soul is not God, nor is the 
body the soul. They are related only by 
Correspondence; but this relation is organic 
and inherent. In the body, therefore, as to its 
form in general and in particular, and as to its 
gestures and play of expression, the soul may 
behold its own functions and its varied activ- 
ities — its understanding in the eye, and intel- 
lectual perception in the function of the eye ; 
the will, with its complex emotions, in the func- 
tions of the heart, and its quickened feelings 
in the quickened pulse. This is Correspond- 
ence. As the soul and body thus correspond, 
so do the principles and objects of the whole 
world of souls correspond with the things and 
movements of the external world of the 
senses. 

If there be any such relation, so organic 
and necessary as to render the external world 
of the senses a mirror of the soul, and 
of the love and wisdom of God, it is 
manifest that a Science of Correspondence 
is possible; that is, a specific and sys- 
tematic knowledge of these relations, and 
the significance of things. Such a science the 
doctrines of the New Church offer in evidence, 



LAW OF INTERPRETATION. 37 

and appeal to its completeness, consistency 
and adequacy as an explanation of the Word 
and Works of God. I am aware, of course, 
that there are those who are called wise who 
would object to this doctrine on the ground 
that it rests upon an assumption that is not in 
the nature of things provable. For while the 
natural world has from the beginning fur- 
nished man with images and representatives 
of his mental processes, there has been no 
well-based recognition of this truth that they 
are effects of spiritual causes. Man has 
rather sought to emerge from the confusion 
of his sensible experience by ascribing the 
phenomena of nature to all sorts of imaginary 
causes, as atoms and motion — none of which, 
however, he supposes to be discernible by any 
of his senses, which only take cognizance of 
the sensations excited by such supposititious 
atoms of matter. Strange it seems, that those 
who have been so loud in denying a God, 
because his existence was not, as they deemed, 
susceptible of demonstration, should also have 
been most positive in maintaining the exist- 
ence of elemental matter which, upon their 
own showing, is equally incapable of detection, 
let alone demonstration. The intuition of 
God has, however, a wonderful basis in human 



38 LAW OF INTERPRETATION. 

nature; and when men shall turn their 
thoughts to Him as the perpetual source and 
center of all substantial being, whose out- 
flowing life, by the medium of the spiritual 
world, creates and sustains the entire Cosmos 
of sensible phenomena, then the law of Cor- 
respondence will be seen as a grand and com- 
prehensive generalization, covering fields of 
study that have not been dreamed of in our 
philosophy. 

The knowledge of the correspondence of 
heaven with earth, was the intuitive posses- 
sion of the men of the most ancient, or Adamic, 
dispensation, and was retained as a science, and 
taught by tradition long after that dispensation 
of the Church had closed. The Divine Mind 
with its treasures of love and wisdom, was to 
their preception written out in the forms, colors, 
motions, sizes, distances, and their endless 
variations in the Kingdoms of nature. They 
needed no written Revelation, " for the invisi- 
ble things of God were clearly seen from the 
Creation of the world, being understood by the 
things that are made." The Apostle express- 
ly says that men originally thus "knew God," 
but censing " to glorify him as God," and be- 
coming vain in their imaginations, they grad- 
ually lost this knowledge, and their hearts were 



LAW OF INTERPRETATION. 39 

darkened. And as man lost the intuitive per- 
ception of correspondence, he fell into the 
lower mental state of merely believing on the 
authority of tradition, that such and such ob- 
jects had such and such signification. The 
knowledge of Correspondence being thus, 
preserved as a science and transmitted by tra- 
dition, served as a basis for the reception and 
understanding of a written Word of God ; un- 
til its spiritual uses were prostituted to pur- 
poses of magic, and the night of idolatry set in, 
when men worshipped the shadow instead of 
the substance. I shall speak again more fully 
of this matter in tracing the history of Reve- 
lation; suffice it to say now, that it was prima- 
tively the origin of all language, and in its 
perversion gave rise to the fanciful mythologies 
of the ancient nations, while on the other hand 
the Word of God is given strictly in accordance 
with it, and is now opened in its spiritual sense 
by means of it. 

It is enough to ask for this doctrine that it 
be examined as a hypothesis. Every theory 
is in supposition till it demonstrates its ability 
to explain the facts it assumes to cover. We 
must admit the possibility provisionally or we 
cannot proceed. This is common to all inves- 
tigations in which a hypothesis is undergoing 



40 LA W OF INTERPRETATION. 

trial, or a theory proof, or a truth demonstra- 
tion. And this doctrine of the internal sense 
of Scripture as the essential revelation, and 
the myth, or history, or law. as its assumed 
body in the world, submits itself to be tried by 
the usual methods for verifying a hypothesis. 
It is not an arbitrary system, or the substitu- 
tion of a new dogma for an old, but assumes 
to rest upon a law of being, and, therefore, to 
be capable of examination and verification. 
Whether there is such a spiritual sense in the 
Scriptures as is claimed, is therefore mainly a 
question of fact. No one can tell whether it 
is there or not until he examines them under 
the guidance of the principles offered, just as 
he would investigate any claim of science by 
an examination of the facts under the guidance 
of the hypothesis proposed. 

We are mainly concerned with the doctrine 
at this time, as a principle of interpretation, 
and I shall proceed to offer some illustrations 
of its application. But it must be remembered 
that this Science, which is to furnish us with 
the alphabet and grammar for the study of 
the spiritual sense of the Word, is not to be 
grasped and mastered in a moment. It is no 
merely speculative and visionary theory, but 
a truly consistent and universal system, or it 



LAW OF INTERPRETATION. 41 

is nothing. The presentation which I have 
given of its fundamental principles is the 
merest statement, and any illustrations which 
can be crowded within the limits of this dis- 
course will be necessarily crude. It will be 
easily admitted by most persons that there is 
some sort of analogy or resemblance between 
mental and physical things, as between heat 
and affection, and between light and truth, 
which common language continually expresses; 
and many will feel that in passing beyond the 
bounds of this moderate, common-sense use of 
analogy, we plunge into folly and mysticism. 
I am required to caution you against any such 
conclusion, for the claims of this Science are 
either true or they are not, and they are alto- 
gether too pretentious to be set aside by a 
hasty inference. The doctrine is explicit : 
God speaks the Word from Himself as by 
real efflux He makes all things from Himself; 
and the whole external world, the work of God, 
presents there a basis for the spiritual interpre- 
tation of Holy Scriptures, the written Word 
of God, — the external objects, events, and im- 
agery of which the letter is composed corres- 
ponding with the spiritual principles, which 
are their organic causes, the series of which 
constitute its spiritual sense. Written accord- 



42 LAW OF INTERPRETATION. 

ing to correspondence with the exactness of a 
law, by the knowledge of the law it may 
be interpreted with the accuracy of a 
Science. In rough statement as a rule of in- 
terpretation the law may be formulated thus: 
That the things signified bear the same rela- 
tion and subserve the same uses in respect to 
the soul, as do their natural representatives 
in respect to the body. What the eye is to 
the body, the understanding is to the soul ; 
and when, therefore, it is said "the eyes of the 
Lord run to and fro through the whole earth," 
His Omnipresence and Providence by virtue 
of His wisdom and understanding, is the 
Spiritual meaning. We are taught to pray, 
"Open thou mine eyes that I may behold 
wondrous things out of thy law," when the 
enlightening of the understanding in the 
truths of the Word, is meant. " Let thine 
eye be single," or "if thine eye offend thee 
pluck it out," is to warn us against the duplic- 
ity of a perverted understanding, and the 
necessity of putting away from us those false 
principles which cause us to offend against the 
truth. What the ear, in like manner is to 
the body, the will as a faculty of perception 
and obedience is to the soul. Wherefore our 
Lord's words so often repeated, " He that hath 



LAW OF INTERPRETATION. 43 

ears to hear, let liim hear/' mean, whosoever 
perceives the Divine command let him obey. 
The unregenerate will, which is averse to learn- 
ing and obeying the Divine Truth, is de- 
scribed as the "uncircurucised ear," which 
" cannot hearken;" and it is said "the Word 
of the Lord is unto them a reproach ; they 
have no delight in it." The hands, as instru- 
ments of bodily energy, denote the ability of 
the soul; and the "Arm of the Lord" is His 
Divine Omnipotence; the "right hand of God" 
is the power of His love, and the protection of 
His Providence is described by the "Ever- 
lasting Arms." So the feet, as the support of 
the whole, denote the lowest principles of the 
mind and its precepts of life ; wherefore, 
" washing the feet" signifies the purification 
and reformation of conduct, and " walk- 
ing in the Lord's paths " denotes actual 
external obedience to the literal commandments 
of righteousness. Bread, as the food of the 
body, represents the Divine goodness, or right- 
eousness, for which man should hunger; and 
it is said "man shall not live by bread alone, 
but by every word that proceedeth out of the 
mouth of God," because man is not to yield 
merely to the impulses of goodness, but is to 
regulate these by the Divine truth, which is 



44 LAW OF INTERPRETATION. 

the form of Divine goodness, and which can 
alone build up the soul in righteousness. 
Therefore the Lord who was the Word, made 
flesh, is "the living bread which came down 
from Heaven," whose "flesh is meat indeed 
and whose blood is drink indeed," being the 
actual sensible manifestation of His Divine 
Goodness and Truth ; and therefore the Lord 
is really present in the Holy Supper, because 
the bread and wine correspond to His " flesh 
and blood," which we veritably eat when we 
appropriate His Goodness and Truth into our 
souls. This is felt by every worthy Commu- 
nicant, and is intuitively perceived and known 
by many. But the law is universal, and applies 
as well to the other Sacrament of Baptism ; its 
whole efficacy is founded in the Correspondence 
of water and washing, and its perception in 
heaven. Water is in its various uses, what 
truth is to the soul. Thus, water in baptism or 
washing, corresponds to truth purifying the 
soul; water as drink, to truth refreshing and 
nourishing the intellect ; water as rain, to those 
divine truths of living consolation which fall 
upon the parched soul as dew from heaven ; 
running waters, to truth seen and accepted as 
flowing from its divine source ; stagnant water, 
to truth cut off from its source ; foul and bit- 



LAW OF INTERPRETATION. 45 

ter waters, to truth perverted and profaned ; 
and water collected in seas, corresponds to 
the vast ocean of external truth, or mere 
science in the memory, gleaned by the senses 
from the things that appear, which accumu- 
late it as we may, still remains but a vast sea, 
heaving, tossing and leading no whither; but 
which rightly employed is a vast storehouse 
from whence the sun of love for wisdom mav 
lift up into the mental firmament the supplies 
to feed "the rivers that run among the hills," 
the living streams of truth which bless and 
fertilize the mind, in the channels of whose 
thoughts they flow. 

Such analogies may impress you as the very 
reverse of exact; but it is not true. They 
are general and superficial, as I have presented 
them; but the exactness lies in this, that not 
only these general meanings, but the more 
specific and definite shades of meaning which 
belong to these symbols, are of universal ap- 
plication. The key fits, whether applied in 
Genesis, or Isaiah, or the Gospels, or the 
Apocalypse. Swedenborg by means of it, 
and under Divine illumination, opened the 
Spiritual Sense of Genesis and Exodus, and 
of the Apocalypse, and in the course of his 
writings applies it to the various portions of 



46 LAW OF INTERPRETATION . 

Holy Scripture, with a fullness and consis- 
tency of results which is the best test of its 
truth. It is to these results we appeal, and 
upon a knowledge of these that we base our 
faith. It is the key that fits. Applied to 
texts, the meaning of which is perfectly clear 
in the letter, it reveals a spiritual meaning 
within them, full of beauty, simplicity, and 
wisdom, which was before sealed and hidden. 
Applied to obscure passages, that in their 
letter teach no doctrine that applies to human 
duty and righteousness, it will show hidden 
within them riches of wisdom, of universal, 
useful application. Applied to contradictory 
texts, it will show their real harmony under 
their apparent contradiction, and make one 
to complement and fulfill the other. All this 
has been demonstrated in the expositions of 
the Church, and the demonstrations are capa- 
ble of unlimited multiplication. Examine 
in illustration, the declaration, " By the Word 
of the Lord were the heavens made." Nothing 
can be clearer in the literal sense than this 
general truth, that the Lord is the Creator of 
the Universe; but it concerns us much more 
to know how the heaven of angels is created 
and the kingdom of heaven implanted in the 
soul. It is for this surely that we need a 



LAW OF INTERPRETATION. 47 

Revelation from God, and to this, these words 
in their spiritual sense must refer. Creation 
signifies spiritual creation- or regeneration ; the 
" Word of the Lord" denotes all Divine Truth, 
by which He who is love itself reveals Him- 
self and His laws to man ; and " the heavens" 
signify that celestial state of man's soul which 
is implanted and formed by regeneration. 
Thus we are taught that it is by the Word of 
the Lord, or the divine truths which He 
reveals to man, that His heaven of peace and 
righteousness is created within us, even as at 
the first. When the Lord's Word says, " Let 
this, or let that, be !" " Do this, or shun that !" 
then if it is so, if we do what He commands, 
light will appear in our darkness, a firmament 
in the midst of the waters, all living things of 
heavenly life, the image of God and heaven 
itself in the soul. For a mere record of fact 
in the letter, we have in the spiritual sense a 
living lesson and promise for every soul who 
is asking " What must I do to be saved ?" And 
can we not see that such an interpretation, in- 
stead of discrediting the letter as some seem to 
fear, really glorifies it as the soul glorifies the 
body? Or again, take the expression of trust: 
" I will call upon God, and the Lord shall save 
me." In the letter it conveys only a general 



48 LAW OF INTERPRETATION. 

truth, but in its spiritual sense a most specific 
discrimination as to the Divine operation in 
the salvation of man. Every name applied 
to designate the Lord, has a most distinct sig- 
nification in respect to man. Thus the name 
"God/' designates the Lord, with respect to 
His wisdom and power, the Lord, that is, as 
revealed to the intellect ; and while man loves 
evil and self above all things, he cannot other- 
wise apprehend the Lord. He can, in his un- 
regenerate state, only call upon " God," because 
he can only understand the Divine as revealed 
by His power and truth to the intellect ; but 
" Jehovah shall save Him." For the name 
"Jehovah" signifies the Lord as to that love 
which is the very life and being of God, and 
though God first appears to us as the Divine 
Truth, it is Divine Love that must save us. 
When we call upon God, the Lord shall save 
ns; or when we trust in the Lord's power and 
truth, and obey His Divine Commandments, 
we shall realize that He is Life, and rejoice in 
His salvation. 

If, then, these plain declarations of the letter 
of Scripture reveal a spiritual meaning within 
them, so full of practical beauty and use, how 
much more shall we need the help of this 
Science of interpretation in that large portion 






LAW OF INTERPRETATION. 49 

of the Word which is wholly obscure? " The 
mountains skipped like rams, and the little 
hills like lambs/' "Let the floods clap their 
hands ; let the hills be joyful together before 
the Lord." Such figures not only indicate in 
general the life and joy which should animate 
the mind receptive of love and faith, but they 
specifically and precisely correspond to par- 
ticular and definite states of the mind. These 
may indeed be figures, but they are more than 
figures; and, as every one knows, there are 
symbolic expressions in all parts of the Word 
which cannot be interpreted by any rhetorical 
rules of speech. In illustration, I will cite the 
Sixth Chapter of Revelations, to which the 
correspondence of the horse will alone serve 
as a key. The horse is used as a representa- 
tive of the intellectual faculty or understand- 
ing of man to which it corresponds; color, 
"whatever it be, denotes the quality, and the 
rider or director, the guiding power of the 
mind. In the Apocalyplic Vision referred to, 
the opening of the first seal exhibits " a white 
horse," the symbol of purity of understanding 
or faith, while " the Word " rules in the mind, 
crowned as its guide and director, " going 
forth conquering and to conquer." In this is 
presented the first state of the church, pure in 



50 LAW OF INTERPRETATION. 

faith when the Word of God prevails. The 
second seal opened shows a red horse, repre- 
senting the deterioration of the understand- 
ing of truth from the pride of intelligence ; 
and the Word becomes then a source of con- 
tention and division. In the opening of the 
third seal the horse is black, representing the 
entire darkening of understanding in the 
church, through the influence of evil. The 
power of the Word has so far declined that 
" a measure of wheat " and " three measures of 
barley" are sold for " a penny," denoting the 
low estimation in which spiritual good is held. 
The fourth seal shows the climax of decline, 
in the " pale horse " whose rider is " death." 
The understanding is not only darkened, but 
the Word is perverted; the Divine Truth, 
which is " the Sword of the Spirit," is turned 
into falsity, "the sword of the adversary," 
with power to destroy. Here the evil princi- 
ples of the heart have prevailed to turn the 
powers of the understanding into a curse. 

Thus briefly it may be seen how this Scrip- 
ture, otherwise meaningless, becomes in its 
spiritual sense, an orderly, serial and instruc- 
tive vision of the successive decline of the 
church as to the understanding of the Word; 
while in the nineteenth chapter of the same 






LAW OF INTERPRETATION. 51 

prophecy, the restoration of understanding in 
the church is represented by the white horse, 
whose rider " is faithful and true/' clothed in 
a vesture upon which is written the name of 
Him, The Word of God. These illustrations 
are but suggestions of the power and life of 
the Word in its spiritual sense ; but I shall 
supplement them with other evidences in the 
discourses to come. 

One word in conclusion, as to the importance 
of this Science of interpretation with respect to 
the thought of our time. The skepticism, the 
doubt, the perplexity of our day, need for 
help not less thought, but higher — a rational 
analysis of the whole character and purpose of 
the Word. You will discover, that when any 
one, teacher or disciple, becomes uncertain as 
to the real presence of a Divine message in 
the Scriptures, and doubtful of their origin in 
Divine inspiration, then all his religious 
thought becomes vague and uncertain. If the 
Church is to revive with power, if faith is to 
continue ,to exercise a function in the life of 
man and of society, the Word of God must be 
vindicated, not as history, but as a world of 
truth and spiritual law, with an order and 
harmony of its own, corresponding to the or- 
der and harmony of the world of science. This 



52 LA W OF INTERPRETATION. 

is the purport of the doctrine of Correspond- 
ence to the Church. It resolves the Scriptures 
into their fundamental principles, and leads 
directly to unity of faith in the universals of 
truth respecting righteousness. The grand, 
universal principles of spiritual life are to be 
found in the heavenly senses of the Holy 
Scripture. 

They are shadowed in its letter, it is 
true, but they are also apparently contra- 
dicted there. It is in the generalizations of 
the spiritual senses that they receive their 
illustration and justification; and thus it is 
here that the great need of our time and 
the great heart-wish of the best of men are 
met and satisfied. 

It is here, also, that partial and antagonistic 
views of truth are seen to be parts of an harmo- 
nious whole, and thus it is here that freedom 
and diversity of opinion become justified in the 
seen and proven organic unity of all truths. 
It is here, also, that our conception of Divine 
Kevelation is enlarged to include all Sacred 
Scripture whereby God has left Himself a wit- 
ness among every people of the world ; and 
thus it is here that the argument against the 
inspiration of the Bible, drawn from the cor- 
relation of truth in all the great religions of 



LAW OF INTERPRETATION. 53 

the world, receives its own illustration, is ex- 
plained and turned to .the. support of that it 
would overthrow. Inspiration doubtless needs 
to have a wider definition than has previously- 
been given to it; but this will be found in the 
spirit that quickeneth. It is the generaliza- 
tions of science which lie back of, and above 
all specially operating laws, that enlarge our 
conceptions of the universe; but the wide 
knowledge of suns and systems does not de- 
stroy our faith in the planet on which our 
feet rest, and into which open our daily func- 
tions. Even so the universal principles of 
spiritual life, which are opened in the new anal- 
ysis of Sacred Scripture show us the deeper 
grounds of faith, and the harmony and final 
unity of all truths in all religions, at the 
same time that they justify and fortify our 
faith in the least commandment of our own 
Holy Bible. It is here in the spiritual sense 
of the Word that we come to that universal 
truth which the best religious sense of our day 
is seeking to justify, that all in every land 
who fear God and keep his commandments, as 
made known to them, shall be saved of hirri. 
Merely natural truth has its limitations; it 
is partial, and determined to particular times, 
and places, and persons. 



54 LAW OF INTERPRETATION. 

This is the nature of the literal sense of 
Holy Scripture and of all doctrine derived 
from it. It presents an amazing variety of 
expression, partial and limited appearances of 
truth, and seemingly contradictory commands. 
The unity of all these things lies below the 
surface, in the doctrines of the spiritual sense, 
which are as true on earth as they are in 
heaven, in one age as in another, for one man 
as for another. Presenting everywhere illus- 
trations of love to God and love to the neigh- 
bor, as the sum and substance of true religion, 
in the church and in heaven, the doctrine of 
the spiritual sense are essentially Catholic and 
comprehensive; they include and harmonize 
all truths, and all expressions of truth, and 
are destined therefore to dissipate the falsities 
which men have derived from the appearances 
of the letter of Scripture, to redeem the Church 
from the schemes of councils, and to restore it 
in simplicity and unity of faith. Unto this 
end, so we believe, "the Lion of the tribe of 
Juda," even the Lord Himself, " hath prevail- 
ed to open the Book and loose the seals there- 
of;" that "the Christain Church which is 
founded upon the word, may again revive and 
draw breath through heaven from the Lord." 
Amen. 



III. 

THE LAW OF DIVIDE INSPIEA- 

TION ; OE, HOW THE WORD 

IS WEITTER 

It is the Spirit that quickeneth.— John vi : 63. 

When our Lord, standing before His dis- 
ciples in His Risen and Glorified body, would 
representatively show forth the giving of the 
Holy Spirit, "He breathed on them and said, 
receive ye the Holy Ghost." He breathed 
upon them because breathing was an external 
representative sign of inspiration ; for the 
Holy Spirit is the divine principle proceeding 
from the Lord, which, when it is received by 
man, is mentally or internally inspired into 
his understanding and life. Even so, God 
breathed into man at the first, " the breath of 
lives ;" and so He continually inspires all men 
by the influx of His life. It is this Holy 
Spirit or divine sphere proceeding from the 

(55) 



56 WHAT IS INSPIRATION? 

Lord that " quickeneth," both the spirit of 
man, and the things that are made, and the 
Word that is written. This breathing forth 
of His Divine Spirit is real and actual; it is 
the perpetual influx into angels and men of 
the truth of His wisdom, in which is life, and 
whose life is the light of man. Coming to 
man through the angelic heavens, and finding 
a reception in his will and mind, it inspires 
him with heavenly love and intelligence and 
power. Coming to the Prophet in its divine 
mission, not to the individual but to heaven 
and the church, — with the overmastering pur- 
pose of revelation, not to the man but to men, 
— it fills him with the prophetic spirit, cloth- 
ing itself in the chambers of memory, speak- 
ing through him what it listeth, and recording 
by his hand what it will. Coming again in un- 
ceasing streams of life and truth into that 
Word which is written, it vivifies and inspires 
the otherwise dead letter, and makes it to be 
— not merely to mean, but actually to be — 
"spirit and life." 

In this general statement you will perceive 
the promise of a more definite and discrimi- 
nating doctrine of Inspiration than that which 
is current. In general, Inspiration is the 
influx of the Holy Spirit of Wisdom and 



WHAT IS INSPIRATION? 57 

knowledge, which gives light to the human 
understanding, and life to all men; but its 
operations and results are different, according 
to the specific end it seeks, and the conditions 
which prevail. We are to make a distinction 
between (a) the Inspiration which is common 
to all good men, and (b) the Inspiration of 
Prophets and Evangelists, and (c) the Inspira- 
tion of the Word written through them. The 
confounding of these things, which are distinct, 
is as hurtful as it is common ; and we can have 
no true doctrine of the Inspiration of the 
Word of God until these distinctions are made 
clear. 

1. Inspiration can not be understood, not 
even the inspiration which is common to all 
men, excepting as life is understood; for In- 
spiration proceeds in all its forms and under 
all conditions from the influx of Divine life.' 
It can not be at all understood except as we 
apprehend the two fundamental facts of human 
life. Of these, the first is, that our life is 
God's life, given to us and received by us. 
The second is, that the Divine life is so given 
to us that it appears as our own life, and really 
abides in us as our own, and is used as our 
own, and becomes what it is in us by our free 
determination. And we rday reconcile these 



58 WHAT IS INSPIRATION* 

two facts in the single proposition : that man 
is a substantial form, receptive of Divine life 
in such a way that he may voluntarily use it. 
The Lord is the only life. He is the cause of 
causes, and by real efflux makes all things, 
not from nothing, but from Himself; and by 
real and constant influx into the things made 
He sustains and moves them. He is life in 
Himself, and life proceeding. Speaking truly 
and absolutely according to the fact, there is 
no more self-existent, independent life in the 
highest angel, in man nor animal, than there 
is in a block of granite. All that is created, 
all that is not God, is mere form and effect; 
and the only respect in which one created form 
differs from another is wholly a difference of 
form, or capacity to receive life and determine 
it to uses. All motion, all activity, whether of 
planet, plant, man or angel, all thought, all 
affection, is caused by the influx of the divine 
of the Lord into forms. The life is one; the 
manifestations differ with the differences in 
the receptive forms. In learning this funda- 
mental truth, however, we have not reduced 
the mystery of life. Its manifestations present 
all the variety that they did before; we have 
only learned to refer this variety to difference 
of organization. This is a truth which science 



WHAT IS INSPIRATION? 50 

in its own way, and in its own field, recog- 
nizes; which it applies in the whole realm of 
sensible things. It is the combination and 
relation of molecules of a definite structure 
which constitutes the difference between char- 
coal and the diamond. It is the combination 
and relation of cells, of a definite structure 
wdiich governs in the manifestations of plant- 
life, and, in a still higher degree, in the man- 
ifestations of animal life. And this relation 
between the structure and quality of sub- 
stances, and between the organic form and the 
quality of life manifested, is more perfectly 
developed with advancing discovery. 

We shall be prepared to learn, then, what 
science, from the nature of its ' plane and 
methods of investigation, could never teach 
us ; — that there are spiritual forms of various 
orders and degrees, capable of receiving and 
manifesting Divine life in love, intelligence 
and use, in the ratio of their perfection ; and 
that man as the complex of these, is a spiritual 
organic form in the image and likeness of God. 
The doctrines of the New Church teach that 
spirit is as real and substantial as matter is, 
but on a prior and superior plane of existence. 
It has corresponding attributes on its own 
plane, and is as capable of organization as 



60 WHAT IS INSPIRATION? 

matter is. The spiritual world is a world of 
spiritual substances, organized in forms, capa- 
ble of variously receiving and manifesting 
spiritual life. Man as a spiritual being, is an 
organized form of spiritual substances, corres- 
ponding in functions with the complex organ- 
ism of his physical body. He has successive 
degrees or planes of faculties corresponding 
with the successive degrees of Divine love and 
wisdom emanating from God, and receptive of 
them; and he has in each a will and under- 
standing receptive of love and wisdom as such; 
and this complex organism is so adjusted to the 
reception of influx, that the life flowing in ap- 
pears to be in him as his own, and becomes in 
him voluntary life. Divine life, which is love 
and wisdom itself, flows into the human will 
as love and there becomes the man's own, and 
is whatever love, desire, affection, or impulse, 
good or bad, it must become by his own deter- 
mination of it to ends. So it flows as wisdom 
into his understanding, and there becomes what- 
ever of thought, opinion, belief, or imagination, 
true or false, it must become by his own use of 
it. Thus man, as a spiritual being, is such an 
organic form, that life flowing in from above 
becomes his to use, and is thereafter, in the 
will, and in its activity, voluntary life. Thence 



WHAT IS INSPIRATION? 61 

is man's freedom; which it is not'easy to define. 
That he has it we know r ; and that it is insep- 
arable from the appearance that life is his own 
to do with as he will, we know. This appear- 
ance is the very groundwork of individuality, 
fundamental to all spiritual development, and 
carefully protected in the order of Divine Prov- 
idence. It is a wonderful effect produced from 
the fact that life appears only where it is re- 
vealed, and it is revealed only where it is re- 
acted. It enters man altogether unperceived? 
because it enters by his unconscious higher de- 
grees. Those degrees previous to their develop- 
ment are like the unoccupied apartments or 
stories of a house; man does not live in them, 
nor has he any practical knowledge of their 
value. Life enters man by his inmost or su- 
preme degree, in which not even the celestial 
angels are conscious, and is therefore unper- 
ceived in its entrance and descent until it comes 
into the plane of his conscious and voluntary 
life. This at first is the very lowest plane of 
his natural faculties; and being there first 
manifested, that appears to be its origin, and 
it appears to be his own, and he is free to use it 
as his own. Every impulse of affection and 
every thought of truth which is inspired into 
man is so presented as to respect and conserve 



02 WHAT IS INSPIRATION? 

this freedom ; for, by means of it alone can 
man acquire by his affections and thoughts 
and deeds, any moral or spiritual character 
whatsoever. 

The Inspiration of Divine life into every 
man, is, therefore, of two kinds. First, im- 
mediate, sustaining in him the faculty of will- 
ing and thinking; and second, mediate, pre- 
senting emotions and thoughts accommodated 
to his voluntary reception. The first com- 
municates the life by which he lives, and is 
free to direct his living. The second inspires 
him with good emotions and true perceptions, 
and thus assists his freedom. Having made 
this distinction, we shall be prepared to see 
something of the nature and method of that 
inspiration by which every man who will, 
may rise into goodness, intelligence and heav- 
enly usefulness. 

The Holy Spirit of truth comes down 
through heaven into man's conscious and 
voluntary life, and is there presented as emo- 
tion and thought, which are perceived no 
otherwise than his own ; because it has been 
finited and humanized bv its descent through 
those who are above man and nearer to God. 
These are the angels, who also exist in suc- 
cessive heavens, according to the faculties 



WHAT IS INSPIRATION '? 63 

which are opened in them corresponding to the 
discrete degrees of Divine truth from the 
Lord. Some are higher than others, and 
nearer to God; some are lower and nearer to 
man. Those who are highest and nearest to 
God first receive the Divine truth as it flows 
forth from Him into forms receivable by 
them. It clothes itself in their minds with 
thought and becomes their wisdom ; and thus 
mediated it is perceptible to angels lower 
than the highest ; and by a similar process, 
through the successive planes of being, the 
truth becomes the thought and wisdom of 
those in the spiritual world, who are low- 
est among the good and wise there, and 
nearest to man. In their minds it has become 
such that it may descend into the thought of 
man, and be given up to his faculties and his 
freedom to be used as his own thought and in- 
telligence. This is " the light which coming 
into the world enlighteneth every man." 
From this is all of man's thought, invention, 
imagination and reason, greater or less, higher 
or lower, according as he, in his freedom, re- 
ceives it and uses it. He may turn it into 
darkness, misapply it, and pervert it into fool- 
ishness ; or he may receive it with joy, use it 
with diligence, and rise by its means above 



64 WHAT IS INSPIRATION ? 

his ordinary level of preception and wisdom. 
It is this inspiration which lifts the poet above 
his knowledge, and the preacher above his 
own wisdom, and shows to both worlds of 
truth which they have never explored in act- 
ual experience. It is this inspiration which 
fills the mind of the inventor with forms he 
has never seen, and enables him to copy that 
in his mind he could never create unaided. It 
is this which illuminates our minds at all 
times, combining new forms of thought, and 
increasing our intelligence and wisdom in pro- 
portion to our dutiful and orderly use of it, 
without compulsion, freely and in the full 
sense that it is our own. 

This inspiration can only minister to the 
development of character and latent possibili- 
ties of intelligence as it is thus freely received 
and determined to the uses of life ; and, there- 
fore, man is always kept unconscious of it as 
inspiration. The nearest aproach to a con- 
sciousness of it which he ever has is when he 
perceives unwonted light and mental activity; 
and then when he reflects about it and com- 
pares this illumination with his customary 
obscurity he calls it inspiration. That it .is; 
and the light of it waxes and wanes according 
to his voluntary discipleship and obedience. 



WHAT IS INSPIRATION ? 65 

2. But the Inspiration of Prophets and 
Evangelists is different from this. That kind 
of Inspiration comes when the Divine wisdom 
flows into the understanding of the man, but 
does not become his own. When God would 
reveal His truth in its own correspondent im- 
ages, He clothes it as before in its descent 
through the heavens of angels with the 
thoughts and perceptions apprehensible to them, 
and thus accommodated enters into the under- 
standing of one whom He has chosen for an 
especial instrument, and of whom He takes 
possession. The influent wisdom, then, so far 
as its purposes require, uses the senses, the 
mind, the memory, the thoughts, the habits of 
thinking, the beliefs and the imaginations of 
the man; but uses them all to effect its own 
purposes. These purposes respect the good of 
men, and not of the individual; and the reve- 
lation is made, not to him, but through him, 
by an Inspiration that controls him. And be- 
cause all lower and sensuous knowledges, 
thoughts and images correspond to those which 
are higher, the influent wisdom uses whatever 
it finds in the man's mind to express higher 
and spiritual truths. And every thought and 
word thus selected and adopted is such as to 
be exactly Correspondent with the divine 



GG WHAT IS INSPIRATION? 

truth within. So that the form given to the 
truth in heaven, the thoughts which it put on 
in the minds of the angels, and the senses in 
which they understand it, and the truth itself 
as it is in God, are all within the literal ex- 
pression furnished from the mind of the hu- 
man instrument. Thus the Holy Scriptures 
were written, and when the record was made, 
or any part of the record at any time, the 
prophetic spirit was withdrawn, and the pro- 
phet remanded into his own voluntary life. 
His inspiration was miraculous, if you please; 
it was at least special and for a specific pur- 
pose, controlled by the will of God, and not his 
own will. What he wrote under such Inspi- 
ration is verily the Word of God, and is itself 
Inspired. 

3. This brings us to speak of the Inspira- 
tion of that which is thus written; which is 
too often overlooked because of failure to 
distinguish between the inspiration which 
is common to all, and that which is 
peculiar to the sacred penman. When the 
inspiration of the Scriptures is spoken of, it is 
commonly meant simply that the} r were writ- 
ten by inspired men ; and the inspiration of 
the writers is not regarded as different in kind 
from the inspiration of teachers and commenta- 



WHAT IS INSPIRATION? 67 

tors. Bat it is different in kind; and the In- 
spiration of the Scriptures is a Divine fact, su- 
perior to either of the other kinds of inspira- 
tion, for it is plenary and complete. If we 
say, then, the Word of God is Inspired, we 
say what we mean — that the thing written is 
Inspired, independently ef the mind of the 
penman who wrote it. The Inspiration of the 
Word results from the peculiar Divine control 
of the writer, and consists in the Divine wis- 
dom it contains, which alone giveth spiritual 
life. " The words that I speak unto you they 
are spirit and they are life." This is the real 
principle of their inspiration. It does not de- 
rive its Inspiration from the writer, but from 
the Living Word Himself, who is thus able to 
impart to this last and ultimate expression of 
His truth, this letter of Scripture which may 
be read and heard of man, certain qualities 
that make it the basis and foundation of heaven, 
and the means of inspiring all men with light 
divine and life eternal. 

Of these the first is, that this literal word 
is a body, a definite expression of Divine 
wisdom, and an adequate instrument of 
Divine life. It is not merely a writing, but 
a creation, an emanation from God proceed- 
ing by discrete degrees of the spiritual world 



68 WHAT IS INSPIRATION t 

and the mind of man, and resting in repre- 
sentative histories and images, which also by 
its presence it makes Divine. Even that side 
of revelation which is formally human is es- 
sentially divine because of the presence of the 
divine and spiritual within it. "Although its 
literal form is molded by man's state, it is 
not determined by his will. The materials 
for this temple of the Divine presence have in- 
deed been supplied by man, but its Maker and 
Builder is God. The stones may have been 
rough-hewn in the quarry of the human mind, 
but no sound of human hammer or axe has 
been heard in the sacred edifice while build- 
ing. No doubt the Scriptures are different in 
their outward form and appearance from what 
they would have been if the state of mankind 
at the time had been less degraded. The let- 
ter would then have been a more perfect im- 
mage of its spirit ; would have contained no 
indications of an angry God ; no command to 
slaughter nations and seize upon their herit- 
age ; no sanction of concubinage ; no worship 
of God by offering Him the blood of 
slain beasts. " These things, however, 
only show the condition of those to whom 
it was first accommodated ; and are evi- 
dences of its perfection, if so be even these con- 



WHAT IS INSPIRATION ? 69 

tain within them a spirit as pure and holy 
as the most perfect form of revelation could 
contain. We shall consider hereafter the prin- 
ciple of adaptation and accommodation to 
human states upon which the letter of theWord 
is necessarily selected; but it concerns us now, 
mainly, to observe that because it is selected 
through man and not by the will of man, and 
because whatever its outward appearance, it is 
correspondent with and representative of the 
truths of Divine wisdom, it therefore necessa- 
rily contains them and is inspired by them. 
It is because it is inspired with a distinct 
spiritual sense that its essential life is able to 
descend to man while reading it devoutly in 
the letter, and thereby to bring him into con- 
junction with heaven. Without a spiritual 
sense, without the living Word Himself pres- 
ent, the written Word could not, indeed, have 
this conjoining power; but, inspired as it is, 
its conjoining power is not dependent upon 
man's ability to enter into the spiritual sense 
by the Science of Correspondences, or any 
other means of mere study. It is rather in 
this, that as man devoutly reads the letter, the 
angels enter into the ideas to which the letter 
corresponds. The letter of the Word, its his- 
tories, images, symbols, precepts and com- 



70 WHAT IS INSPIRATION ? 

mandments, when read by man or entertained 
in his thoughts, forms in his mind that basis 
and foundation for heaven which his natural 
mind, perverted as it is, could in no other way 
present to the Lord. Into this orderly recep- 
tacle the Divine influx of life and spirit, which 
is personal to every man, can be imparted, 
and the man be led into vital communion with 
angels and conjunction with the Lord. 

The literal sense and the spiritual sense are 
one, as body and soul, because they corres- 
pond; and therefore when man devoutly 
reads the Word in its letter, " internal truth 
flows in and is conjoined with external, man 
being ignorant of it." This is the source of 
that peculiar power in the Word, of which 
every devout reader is sensible, which can 
not be accounted for by the ideas of the let- 
ter alone, and which, therefore, the infidel 
ridicules as superstition. It is by this com- 
munion with heaven, which the Word effects 
through its double sense, that those occasion- 
al perceptions of the interior significance of a 
simple story or an obscure symbol in the 
Scriptures, which every humble student of 
the Bible, as God's message, has experienced, 
are effected. The influx of good entering 
from the Lord into the interiors of the mind, 



WHAT IS INSPIRATION ? 71 

inspires and gives life to the truth which en- 
ters from without, and becomes perceptible as a 
holy consolation, a refreshment, an impulse 
of good, a strengthening of faith, an illumin- 
ation of thought. By the method of its com- 
position, and consequent inspiration of Divine 
wisdom, so holy, so perfect, so exactly corres- 
pondent with spiritual truth, is the letter of 
the Word, that it continually bears the life of 
the spirit and the bread of heaven, down, even 
to the natural man. 

This power of the Word, by virtue of its 
double sense, to conjoin heaven and the church> 
and bring down spiritual life and knowledge 
to man, is a matter of very great practical im- 
portance and comfort. But we must not over- 
look the great and important use of the spirit- 
ual sense of the Word as revealed and entered 
into in some degree by men on earth. Its 
value, together with the Science of Corres- 
pondence, is not in substituting a merely in- 
tellectual study of correspondences for the 
devout reading and contemplation of the 
Holy Word in its letter; for there can be no 
substitute with men on earth for the Divine 
Life and power of truth in its own Holy ulti- 
mate. But the value of the revelation of the 
spiritual sense of the Word is, first, that we 



72 WHAT IS INSPIRATION? 

may know what Scripture is really Divine 
from plenary inspiration; and second, that we 
may have the genuine doctrines of truth by 
which as a lamp to read the letter. The letter 
of Holy Scripture has been separated from its 
spirit in the Church ; the very existence of a 
spiritual sense has been denied; and there is 
consequently no vital doctrinal belief, and very 
little practical belief in the Divinity of the 
letter. It is when it is so regarded, apart from 
its Divine origin, and in its own light, that 
"the letter killeth." What the Science of 
Correspondence does for the man of the 
Church, therefore, is, to furnish him with the 
internal evidence of the Divine Inspiration of 
the Word, and to supply him with a principle 
by which to test the Canon of the Word in- 
dependently of any authority of tradition. 
Only that Scripture is plenarily Inspired 
which contains an internal sense, and the doc- 
trine of Correspondence in its application to 
the Canon reveals what books have such a 
sense. These are the five books of Moses, 
Joshua, Judges, the two books of Samuel, the 
two of Kings, the Psalms, all the Prophets 
from Isaiah to Malachi, the four Gospels, and 
the Book of Revelation. These books are 
written according to the law of Correspcndr 



WHAT IS INSPIRATION? 73 

ence, containing an internal sense, and effecting 
an immediate communication with heaven; 
but the Epistles and other Scripture, though 
written by inspired men, do not contain an in- 
ternal sense, and do not claim to be the Word 
of the Lord. The inspiration of the Apostles, 
was inspiration of the kind that is common to 
good and holy men, and their Epistles con- 
tain the doctrine of the Gospels; but contain- 
ing no internal sense they do not possess that 
plenary Inspiration which belongs for instance 
to the Gospels themselves. If this division of 
the Canon seems to you arbitrary, and obnox- 
ious to your pious traditions, I beg of you to 
remember that it rests upon internal evidences 
which are verifiable, and that it in no way de- 
grades the Epistles, but only exalts the Plena- 
rily Inspired Word, which is seen by Corres- 
pondence to possess an Internal Sense. We 
hold the inspiration of the Epistles and the 
book of Proverbs, for example, as high as any 
doctrine of Inspiration current in any school 
of theology ; but we place the Inspiration of 
the Pentateuch, and the books of Joshua, 
Judges, Samuel and Kings, and the Psalms, the 
Prophets and the Gospels, inconceivably high- 
er than any doctrine of the church has ever 
been able to place it. The revelation of the 



74 WHAT IS INSPIRATION ? 

spiritual sense enables us, then, to know what 
books are the Very Word of God, why and in 
what manner they are Divine, and that by 
them the Lord immediately quickens the souls 
of men. The knowledge of the existence of 
a spiritual sense is like a vision of Jacob's 
ladder ; for so do men behold the Holy Word, 
its foot resting on the earth, its top reaching 
to heaven, and angels ascending and descend- 
ing thereon between God and the human soul. 
"If man w r ere aware of the existence of a 
Spiritual Sense, and when reading the Word 
were to allow his thoughts to be influenced by 
his knowledge of it, he would come into inte- 
rior wisdom, and into a still closer conjunc- 
tion with heaven, because he would thus enter 
into ideas similar to those of the angels." 

Moreover, the doctrines of the Christian 
churches have really falsified the letter of the 
Word by confirming its apparent truths as 
genuine truths ; they have taken away " the 
key of knowledge," and perverted the genuine 
Divine truth which shines through its letter 
in places like a face through a veil. The 
Spiritual Sense of the Word was therefore re- 
vealed, that the man of the Church might 
have the genuine doctrines of truth as a lamp 
by the light of which to read the Word in its 



WHAT IS INSPIRATION? 75 

letter. Thus the doctrine of Correspondence, 
and the Spiritual Sense of the Word as opened 
by means of it, are needed in the Church for 
the development of a spiritual reason in man, 
the cultivation of a rational faith, and the tri- 
umphant vindication of the Divine authen- 
ticity of the Scriptures; and all this, if for 
nothing else, that men may approach the Word 
of God devoutly, in prayer and faith, to re- 
ceive through its very letter the spiritual sus- 
tenance which flows down into the minds of 
those who so approach it. 

Another quality wdiich is given to the letter 
of the Word, by its inspiration and dictation, 
is that the truths, or appearances of truth, in 
the letter, are expressed " in such a way that 
the simple may understand in simplicity, 
and the wise in wisdom/' In many places, for 
example : anger, wrath and vengeance are at- 
tributed to the Lord ; and it is said that He 
punishes, casts into hell, tempts, and such like 
things. He who believes this in simplicity, 
and on that account fears God and guards 
himself from sin against Him, will by that 
very faith and obediance be brought into a 
vital realization of the genuine truth that the 
Lord is love itself, and the appearances of anger 
and wrath are the only reflection of man's 



7G ' WHAT IS INSPIRATION? 

own opposition to goodness and truth. And 
thus it is with the truths of the letter of the 
Word both genuine and apparent; they are 
precisely those, which being, obeyed if they 
be command, or learned, and made fertile by 
meditation, if they be instruction, will gradu- 
ally lift up the mind to a perception of the 
higher truths within. 

It may be asked why need the written Word 
be so given, with its essential meaning obscur- 
ed in literal appearances? Why was it not 
composed in such a manner that the genuine 
truth could be perceived by everyone? And I 
might ask in return, why was not this natural 
world so constituted that everyone could com- 
prehend it at a glance? Why do so many 
things in the world around us appear different 
from what they are ? Why does not the flash 
of the lightning reveal to the wondering savage 
the science of electricity? Why should the 
God of nature delude His intelligent creatures 
with such fallacies as are everywhere insepar- 
able from the senses ? 

The answer to these questions is the answer 
to the other. We have learned that the fal- 
lacies and appearances of nature are insepera- 
ble from the senses, and that their underlying 
principles are only discoverable by experience, 



WHAT IS INSPIRATION f 77 

observation and reason; and a revelation which 
is to reach the sensual mind of man must ob- 
serve the same law. Just as the senses refuse to 
see things in nature otherwise than as they ap- 
pear, and, however exalted and extensive the 
cultivation of science, still maintain the im- 
pressions of phenomena as presented to the 
merest child ; just as all the truths of science 
subsequently learned, serves only to explain 
the impressions of the senses, and see them- 
selves imaged therein, and rest firmly in 
them as their eternal foundation; so the re- 
ligious impressions derived from the letter of 
the Word, remain through all our develop- 
ment of a rational theology ; and all our 
knowledge of spiritual realities neither re- 
moves them nor weakens them, but converts 
them into a mirror wherein it sees itself re- 
flected. Because the Word of our Written 
Bible is, in itself a series of related adaptations 
of divine wisdom to angels and men, extant 
an open book in all the heavens and on the 
earth, we may take hold of it anywhere, and 
find the Lord there. In simplest precept, or 
or in figure or song, whatever appeals to our 
state, and impresses our religious faculty, there, 
with humility and love, or with shame and 
fear, as the case may be, we may rest in a be- 



78 WHAT IS INSPIRATION? 

ginning of obedience, and find the Lord of all 
life. 3?or he dwells by influx in all its forms 
and appearances, to operate our regeneration, 
and " open our eyes to behold the wonderful 
things in His law." 

And now, in conclusion, let us turn once 
more to the representative act of the Lord 
with which we began. The disciples on whom 
he breathed represent these inspired truths of 
His Word and doctrine ; and the breathing 
forth of His holy spirit represents that common 
influx through heaven into the mind of man, 
by which these truths become "teachers taught 
of Him" are sent forth into his mental world 
to convert and turn it unto rightousness. 
Whosesoever sins they remit are remitted; 
that is, whoever submits to their guidance in 
the shunning of evils, is delivered from the 
power of his sins. Whosoever will not yield 
to their guidance in the shunning of evils be- 
cause they are sins, then are his sins retained. 
Such is the commission and power of the Word 
of God even in its letter. Its truths are 
Divine and infallible teachers and judges of 
men, because they are mediums of that Spirit 
of wisdom and knowledge which is able to 
"guide into all truth" and "convince the world 
of sin, of rightousness and of judgment." But 



WHAT IS INSPIRATION ? 79 

this infallibility of which we speak is not that 
which men oppose and defend in their debates 
concerning the authenticity of the history or 
science in the Bible. The Word is infallible 
for its own purposes, which are divine and 
eternal. It has nothing to do with history or 
science except to use them, or to use men's 
impressions of them, so far as they can be used 
in the giving of an ultimate body to revelation 
in the world. The infallibility of the truths 
of the Word, is not therefore, as teachers of 
natural wisdom, but as quiekeners of eternal 
life in whosoever will obey; as teachers, "able 
to make men wise unto salvation." Amen. 



IV. 

THE HISTOEY OF REVELATION; 
OE, THE SUCCESSIVE DIS- 
PENSATIONS OF 
THE CHURCH. 

The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.— John 1, 14. 

The internal sense of the Word opens to 
thought the organic nature, and the needs of 
the human soul ; the nature and consequences 
of evil ; the nature and progress of regener- 
ation ; the augumentation of blessedness in 
heaven, and the insane delights of the wicked 
in hell. It opens, also, the spiritual history 
of the race, the successive states of the Church, 
and the Corresponding Divine dispensations of 
truth, or the degrees and modes of Divine 
revelation and manifestation. The race has 
had its well defined periods of progress, cor- 
responding to infancy, childhood, youth and 
manhood, in the individual. These are its 
Ages with respect to its successive states : its 

(80) 



HISTOR Y OF BE VELATIOJST. SI 

Dispensations or Churches, with respect to the 
manifestation of the Word and Providence of 
God. The Spiritual history of these dispen- 
sations or Churches, and the corresponding 
adaptations of "the Word," which "was with 
God, and was God," constitutes what may be 
called " the internal historical sense" of Holy 
Scripture; and I propose in this discourse to 
present a summary view of this history of 
revelation and the corresponding dispensations 
of the Church, as it is expounded in the doc- 
trines of the New Church. The scope of the 
subject is so vast, that I must of necessity 
speak dogmatically and in general terms ; but 
it is, also, of so great importance to the whole 
subject before us, that the barest statement 
will be found of use in a judgment of the 
doctrine of the Sacred Scriptures here advoca- 
ted. I may remind you that the means of 
verification are at hand, within easy reach of 
every sincere student. 

Revelation necessarily has a history, and 
its history is at the same time the history of 
the Church. We may be sure of this, if we 
remember (a) that the Revelation of the Word 
is God's manifestation to finite men of the 
infinite things of his own Wisdom, (b) that 
nothing can be given to men which cannot be 
6 



82 HISTOJR Y OF BE VELATION. 

received by them, and (c) that ages and races 
differ indefinitely in their capacity of reception. 
As ages succeed, or as the states of men change, 
the manifestation of the Word, which is the 
light of infinite life, must change its form in 
adaptation to this varied receptivity. Other- 
wise it could not be recieved, and the light 
would shine in darkness, uncomprehended. If 
for this reason Revelation is multiform, the 
order and succession of changes in its adapta- 
tion, must correspond with the order of the 
spiritual progress of mankind. The history 
of the one is the history of the other. 

Another preliminary statement of import- 
ance is, that the individual is the image of the 
universal man. Beginning in the innocence of 
infancy and progressing through, the simple, 
open, sincere, affectionate confidence of child- 
hood, and the restless, willful self-assertion of 
youth, the individual develops gradually to 
manhood. With continual fluctuations, these 
successive stages in the life of man mark a 
gradual development of science, and astrength- 
ening of the powers of the natural man ; but 
on the other hand there is a spiritual declen- 
sion from the affectionate docility of infancy 
and the faith of childhood, to the self-will and 
pride of intelligence which mark the natural 



HISTORY OF RE VELATION. 83 

man. As it is, thus, with the individual, so 
has it been with the race — the larger man. 

So far as natural science is able at all to 
read the history of the race, it has been with 
all its fluctuations a substantial progress in 
civilization and natural knowledge. The 
spiritual sense of the Word, however, discloses 
to us the other side of this development, show- 
ing a spiritual declension, marked by a suc- 
cession of Divine dispensations and Churches, 
in which the Heavenly Father adapted His 
Word to the changing conditions and successive 
spiritual deflections of His children. 

Now, it is important to remember that in 
both cases the end is an angelic maturity. 
Both with the individual and with the race, 
spiritual preparation is made in the successive 
declining stages, for subsequent redemption 
and regeneration ; while on the other hand 
the progressive natural development is becom- 
ing a prepared foundation for the subsequent 
activity of redeemed and quickened spiritual 
powers. The innocent states of infancy, the 
pupilage of childhood, and the discipline of 
youth are internally stored away, and "re- 
main," to be again vivified and developed in 
the time of man's mature rational regenera- 
tion. Though seemingly forgotten, while man 



84 HIS TOR Y OF BE VELA TIOJST. 

is developing as a social and civilized natural 
being, they return with multiplying power in 
the spiritual states of his religious maturity. 
In close analogy with this progress of man, 
the successive Divine dispensations or churches, 
from Adam to the coming of the Lord, fur- 
nished a necessary preparation for the Incar- 
nation and Redemption in Jesus Christ. The 
Word was not immediately " made flesh," but 
mediately through a succession of Divine dis- 
pensations. 

The internal sense of the Word presents 
five general dispensations of the Church. The 
word Church is used in this connection, not to 
indicate sects, organizations or establishments, 
but the mode of Divine revelation, and the 
form of religious life in man. The church is 
the Kingdom of God on earth ; it is the reve- 
lation of Divine truth and goodness, and on 
man's part it is the way of apprehending the 
truth and the degree of obedience to it. On 
its Divine side the Church, therefore, is one 
in all time, for it is the giving forth of that 
Word, which is with God, and is God ; but 
on its human side, it varies according to man's 
capacity of understanding and doing the 
Word. In either view, it is a Kingdom of 
God within man, and not a thing of outward 



HISTOR Y OF RE VELATION. 85 

observation. It is proper enough to call our 
organizations and instrumentalities which are 
derived from the Word and Church in man, 
churches ; but this is not the primary sense 
of the word Church. It is not the sense in 
which we use it it in this present connection ; 
and when we speak of dispensations or Churches, 
the degree and mode of Divine revelation, and 
the corresponding forms of the religious life 
in man, are to be understood. Using the word 
in this sense, the Holy Scriptures present, as 
I said, five general dispensations of the Church; 
— three preceding the Incarnation, one inau- 
gurated by it, and the fifth predicted, and now 
beginning to be realized. Those which pre- 
ceded the Incarnation, mark the successive 
stages of the Divine adaptation of truth to 
man's " fall," even till it was manifested to his 
sensuous perception " in the flesh/' to work in 
the plane of his natural life a plenary redemp- 
tion. We shall see that " the fall of man" 
was gradual, and the coming of the Lord into 
the world was progressive ; and, in the whole 
wonderful history, we are to behold a steady 
evolution of the Divine purpose to become 
Himself, the Rock against which the gates of 
hell should not prevail, and have to Himself 
a Church which shall be indeed the Bride, the 
Lamb's wife. 



86 HISTORY OF REVELATION. 

The first state of the Church, and the Gold- 
en Age of the race, is set in Holy Scripture 
under the allegory, or "composed history" of 
Adam and the Garden of Eden. In the spirit- 
ual sense of the first chapters of Genesis, we 
have a very full and explicit showing of the 
innocent, artless, infantile character of the 
Most Ancient Church. Under the symbol of 
creation is portrayed the development of the 
celestial man by the Spirit of the Lord ; not 
the creation of the outward phenominal heav- 
ens and earth and moving things, but the de- 
velopment of the internal spiritual earth and 
heavens of the soul ; the orderly regeneration 
of primitive men; the formation of their will 
and understanding, with their affections and 
perceptions, by and under the moving Spirit 
of God. The Garden of Eclen, the paradise 
of God, is the resultant state of mind and 
heart; with the Lord and the perception of 
His life ever present, and all heavenly growths 
of affection and thought springing up in the 
soul, from the heat and light of His immanent 
Spirit. 

Let us pause for a moment upon this won- 
derful story of Creation. There is just now 
in the Churches a revival of the attempt to 
harmonize the first chapter of Genesis with 



HIS TOE Y OF BE VJSZATIOjST. 87 

current science, and by a skillful, and doubt- 
less innocent, reading of the truth of science 
into the narrative, the attempt is attended with 
a measure of apparent success. But the result 
is quite disproportionate to the labor expended, 
and can scarcely be called satisfactory. The 
general truth that God is the Creator of the 
universe, is a truth of revelation, which science 
cannot discover, but which it may confirm. 
Beyond this the attempt to read the lessons of 
observation into the story of Creation issues 
in nothing; it results in no other important 
contribution to either natural or spiritual 
knowledge. When all is done that can be 
done in that direction, we still feel that there 
must be some other worthy spiritual revelation 
for us in the wonderful details of the narrative 
in Genesis. The Science of Correspondence 
in opening to us the spiritual meaning of this 
Scripture justifies this feeling, and vindicates 
the Word of God as such. The structure of 
the narrative, which has been a source of such 
infinite trouble to the literal interpreters, is 
seen to have a divine cause in the message and 
meaning it bears ; and to yield an orderly 
serial and instructive description of the pro- 
cesses and progressions of God's spiritual Crea- 
tion, or regeneration of man. The " Creation" 



88 HISTOB T OF BE VELATION. 

described is regeneration ; the active agent is 
the Word, the Spirit of God ; the field of oper- 
ation is the heavens and earth within man, or 
what the iapostle calls, the internal and exter- 
nal man ; the six days are the successive states 
of spiritual development; and the Sabbath of 
rest is the resultant concordance of human 
nature with the Divine nature, when all in 
man is God's in him, and " very good." 

Regeneration is the birth, or development 
of the Spiritual nature in man, and like all 
birth it is orderly and progressive. 

The natural mind, which is born from the 
world, from the impressions of the senses, and 
habits of systematic thought in regard to those 
impressions, is first formed in man before the 
spiritual planes of his nature can be developed 
in the least. But in this state of the natural 
man, preparation is made for their develop- 
ment. Some knowledge of spiritual things 
can be laid up in the treasure-house of his 
memory. He can be taught that there is a 
God, and a spiritual world, and that realities 
which transcend the senses have claims upon 
his attention ; and in the learning of these 
things, in his infancy and childhood, certain 
affections of delight in them are stored away 
in the, as yet unconscious, interiors of his soul. 






HISTOB Y OF BE VELATION. 89 

But darkness broods over the sea of worldly 
knowleges and possibilities ; what he has 
learned of spiritual things, is chaotic, and 
without power to reduce the things of his 
consciousness to order and endow them with 
heavenly life. To quicken all these possibili- 
ties, the Spirit of God moves in him, and the 
Living Word comes to him with its " light." 
Then begins with man a second state, in 
which he finds that he has two natures; an 
inward and an outward man ; and that, there- 
fore, there are two spheres of knowledge, one 
pertaining to the outward world, and the 
other to God and immortal life. The knowl- 
edge of God and his law, now stands apart in 
awful distinctness and clothed with its own 
authority ; not to be confounded with the 
mere natural knowledges which come through 
the avenues of sense. If it has slept inopera- 
tive, the breath of God may vivify it, and dis- 
criminate it from our own will and thought, 
and lay a solemn interdiction upon our evils 
and errors. Then comes in a third state, in 
which man begins, from the Lord, to talk 
piously and devoutly, and to do good actions ; 
but which , nevertheless, are not living or sav- 
ing, because they are supposed to originate in 
himself. The outward and inward man are 



90 HISTOR T OF BE VELATION. 

not only separated by the firmament; but 
they are placed face to face, and in opposition 
to each other. Man obeys the Lord's truth, 
but it is a forced obedience, rendered in oppo- 
sition to inclination. In the first place, truth 
was only something learned; in the second 
state, it was seen to be from the Lord, and in- 
vested with his Divine authority; but in this 
third state, it comes out with its reasons and 
the commands of conscience. It brings re- 
pentance and self-denial; and must continue 
until we are subdued, and our moralities are 
fixed in habit. When this state is full, and 
its work completed, still our evils are not re- 
moved. 

But they have been silenced, and self-love 
loosened in all its intrenchments ; and then at 
last, the Lord will come into the heart, and 
take up all its room, dimly at first, full-orbed 
at last. This fourth state is that in which man 
receives from the Lord the sun of spiritual 
love, and the moon of living faith, and the stars 
of heavenly knowledge, all set in the firmament 
of the internal mind, to shed light and quick- 
ening into the reformed earth of the external 
man. Man is moved with new impulses, and 
thinks and acts from the Divine will as his 
central and controlling motive. The old lusts 



HISTOBY OF REVELATION. 91 

and persuasions are not merely loosened, but 
they move out, even beyond the region of the 
consciousness, as this new and mighty love 
for goodness and truth for their own sake be- 
comes the very life of man's affections. We 
not only believe the truth but see it and feel 
it. Our moralities become spontaneous, the 
outbursting of the soul's unfailing love. They 
are living and life-giving; and the following 
states of the regenerate life, are only the ulti- 
matums of [this new will and faith, in all the 
living forms of regenerate natural affection 
and perception. When the love of the Lord 
has become fixed in the heart, and burns there 
as an eternal sun, it not only transfuses all our 
beliefs and runs them into celestial moulds, 
but all our knowledge is exalted into the ser- 
vice of the new man. Then finally the cen- 
tral Divine love flows forth into all our deeds; 
they are duties no longer, but delights. This 
is the sixth day in which God makes a man in 
His image and likeness ; it is the end of the 
states of labor, for the Sabbath comes, the 
golden dawn of God's eternal rest in the soul. 
Primeval men, though free from the tenden- 
cies and proclivities to evil which we inherit 
as the result of a tainted ancestry, were, never- 
theless, merely natural men, needing to be re- 



02 HISTOR Y OF BE VELATION. 

born, or developed as spiritual beings into the 
image and likeness of God. With them the 
processes of regeneration were free from the 
throes of spiritual temptation, which men at 
this day encounter on account of inherited 
evil, but the succession of states and order of 
development was the same as it is with us, and 
as it will always be. This, of which we have 
given only the most general statement, is pre- 
sented in the Story of Creation. Every detail 
of the narrative is pregnant with the most en- 
lightening doctrine as to the progressive devel- 
opment of the spiritual nature of primeval 
men, even to the establishment with them of 
the Celestial Church. Like a garden planted 
by the Lord, was the Most Ancient Church in 
the perfection and beauty of its first estate. 
It pulsated with the Divine life, and was irra- 
diated with its light. The natural history of 
this age is not preserved, but every item in 
the Bible Story of Adam is replete with sig- 
nificance as to its celestial state ; and some- 
thing of the same Allegory is preserved in 
the traditions of all peoples. The men of this 
age were simple, open, sincere, affectionate and 
true. They acted from impulse ; but their 
impulse was derived from the Lord. The 
Word which " was with God, and was God," 



HISTORY OF REVELATION, 93 

flowed into them as a stream from the Divine 
fountain ; indeed as the very Divine life itself, 
and thus a living light. The Lord walked 
and talked with them in the midst of the gar- 
den ; they were capable of holding Commun- 
ion with God by means of His love and wis- 
dom " written on their hearts." They were 
capable thus of loving what he loved, and lived 
in open perception of His wisdom. Heaven 
and earth were united in them ; the will of God 
was done in earth as it is in heaven; and the 
whole phenomenal world was a mirror of 
Divine intelligence, wisdom peace and love. 
They had no need of external verbal revelation 
of truth to guide them into the apprehension 
and perception of it. Instead of the command 
to love the Lord with all the heart, or the 
teaching that they should do so, with the rea- 
sons for so doing, they had this truth inspired 
through the heart and revealed to them in 
affection to do so. They needed no instruction 
from without, no authority to coerce, and no 
reasons to persuade ; for to what is good they 
had a " yea " implanted in the will, and to 
what is evil a " nay," with none of that stub- 
bornness of will which requires more than these. 
They needed no compass to shape their course, 
for the truth was in their wind and tide. As 



Oi HIS TOE T OF BE VELATION. 

they received light from the life within, their 
inclinations and appetites were of the truth, and 
were true. 

In time, for reasons into which we cannot 
enter particularly, the people of the Most An- 
cient Church fell away from this single- 
minded communion with the Lord. The rea- 
sons, indeed, are not easy to give. In what 
the fall of man consisted we shall see; that it 
came in the exercise of his implanted freedom 
we may believe ; but how the first impulse 
and enticement grew upon him, when all was 
" ver } r g 00( V' it would be more difficult to 
show. Perhaps we shall see an image of this, 
but only an image, in the transition of the in- 
fant to the child with its more pronounced 
willfulness. Its senses are more and more 
developed; and with their advance toward 
supremacy there comes in something of self- 
assertion, and self-confidence. This was the 
fall of the people of the Most Ancient 
Church, however it may have come about — 
a yielding to the suggestions of the serpent, the 
sensual principle, with its persuasion that all 
things were not from the Lord, that they them- 
selves were really good and wise, and might 
of themselves judge of good and evil. Then 
began the decline of that Church ; and then 



IIISTOR T OF BE VELATION. 95 

was given the promise of the Messiah. The 
progress of its consummation was gradual; 
and under the names of the posterity of Adam 
is detailed the various sects into which it di- 
vided, and by which preparation was made 
for a new Church and a new dispensation of 
the Word, when the consummation of that 
should have fully come. 

At the end of every Church, the Lord saves 
a remnant, with whom may be established a 
new dispensation : or what is the same thing: 
He provides that the new shall be established 
with the few who abide in faith and hope to 
the end of the old. The Golden Age passed 
away, and the Adamic Church was swallowed 
up in a flood of evil practices and false doc- 
trines. The Silver Age followed, and a new 
Church was established, the spiritual history 
of which is set forth under the story of Noah 
and his posterity. It is in this change that we 
shall see how the Lord, or the Word, follows 
man, with adaptations adequate to his new ne- 
cessity. 

The men of the former age acted from im- 
pulse ; and, while their impulses were good, 
all was very good. But when, from the 
deflection of the will, their impulses were 
turned into evil, they still followed them. 



90 IIISTOR Y OF BE VELATION. 

" Every imagination of the thought of their 
hearts was only evil continually ; and how 
was it possible for the Lord to reclaim them ? 
How, indeed, but by bringing the race to a 
halt, and giving it a new start, and this in a 
new direction ! When He could no longer 
lead man by his affections — when every influx 
of the Divine Life into man's will was turned 
into evil desire, and this in turn presented it- 
self in his thought in the form of falsity — 
the Lord interposed by presenting His Word 
to the thought first through an external rev- 
elation. Thus, by a radically new dispensa- 
tion of the Word, in an entirely new way, the 
Lord inaugurated a new state of the Church. 
With the Noetic Church a new mode of 
life was introduced ; by external revelation it 
was made possible to think and reflect concern- 
ing the truth as something apart from that 
which the heart loved. The understanding 
could be elevated above the will, and truth 
learned as doctrine, could be acknowledged as 
duty, and finally loved for its own sake. The 
Adamic Church had only perception of truth 
from love, and when the love was evil the truth 
was turned into falsity in the thought, but the 
Noetic Church was endowed with conscience 
formed by a new manifestation of the Word 



HISTOE Y OF BE VELATIOX. 97 

through an external revelation which could be 
learned, understood and loved. The Adamic 
Church beheld heaven in the earth ; they per- 
ceived without reflection the Divine and heav- 
enly things in their earthly Correspondences. 
The Noetic Church, on the other hand, was 
taught intellectually to see spiritual things in 
natural things. The knowledge of Correspond- 
ences was given as a science in the form of 
doctrine; and the Divine truth was externally 
revealed by means of a written Word com- 
posed exclusively according to the correspond- 
ence of natural with Divine things. Repre- 
sentative worship was instituted in which the 
places, the sacrifices and symbolism, were all 
significative of spiritual things ; and the sig- 
nification was communicated to Novitiates by 
instruction, and preserved by tradition. The 
references in the Bible to the book of Jasher, 
the Wars of Jehovah, and the Enunciations 
confirm the existence of an ancient Word ; 
and Swedenborg teaches us that the first chap- 
ters of Genesis, which treat of Creation, of 
Adam and Eve, of the Garden of Eden, and 
of their sons and posterity down to the flood, 
and also, of Noah and his sons, were tran- 
scribed from that Word by Moses. (T. C. R. 
279.) 

7 



98 HISTORY OF REVELATION. 

The Christian world has come to recog- 
nize that there was an Old Testament before 
the Pentateuch was written, and that traces 
of these lost works are to be found in the 
actual text ; and it ought to be well disposed 
therefore, toward the further teaching that it 
was continued in use among some of the nations 
of the East, down even to the time of the Jew- 
ish dispensation. And from the character of 
the earty chapters of Genesis, which are gener- 
ally believed to have been copied from more 
ancient documents, it may easily be confirmed 
that the earliest written revelation was given in 
the pure language of Correspondences. It was 
because that Word was full of Correspondences 
which signified celestial and spiritual things 
remotely, and consequently began to be falsi- 
fied by many, that in Divine Providence it dis- 
appeared, and another Word was given, writ- 
ten by Correspondences not so remote. For in 
the course of time, the Ancient Church also 
fell away, as had the Adamic Church before 
it. Noah became drunken with the wine of 
his own vineyard ; that is to say, the people 
of the Ancient Church began to pervert the 
doctrines of spiritual truth to the feeding of 
their pride and self-gratification. They began 
to consult their own intelligence regarding 



BIS TOE Y OF RE VELATIOJST. 99 

Divine things, to be deceived with their own 
conceits, and confused with their own reason- 
ings. They aspired to build a Tower which 
should reach to heaven ; and instead of one 
speech and language as at first, their doctrines 
became confused and divided ; they gradually 
lost their knowledge of Divine language, be- 
came Idolaters, Magicians and Sorcerers, and 
in their dispersion lost their written Word 
itself. The partial and vitiated doctrines of 
its Divine wisdom were preserved in the tradi- 
tions, and written in the sacred books of the 
various nations ; but no longer possessing the 
key to the ancient Correspondences and repre- 
sentatives, their worship soon descended into 
one form or another of polytheism and idol- 
atry. 

In natural knowledge and civilization the 
race was advancing. The rise of empires 
began — Egypt, Nineveh and Babylon — the 
foundations of which outstretch even the 
farthest reach of tradition. But on its spir- 
itual side the race was declining, and God 
following it. When the Celestial perception 
of the Adamic Church was destroved, the 
Lord invested Himself as the Word with the 
Spiritual doctrines of truth revealed to the 
understanding of the Noetic Church; and 



100 HISTOB Y OF BE V ELATION. 

when this also failed, He called Abraham, and 
inaugurated a new dispensation of the Church 
with the Hebrew and Jewish people, and led 
them by means of direct commandments, 
wonders, and threats and promises. First, to 
Abraham and the Patriarchs, by Angelopha- 
nies, and such direct supernatural revelation 
as they were able to receive, and afterward to 
the Jews under the leadership of Moses, and 
through the word of the Prophets, the Lord es- 
tablished a representative of a Church, unto 
the time when He must needs come in the flesh, 
and put forth the might of His Divine truth 
in a humanity of His own. 

The idea to be sustained is, that from the 
fall of Adam to the time of the appearing of 
Jesus Christ, the Church gradually declined 
from its primeval simplicity ; man receding 
further and further from the interior love of 
God and the perception of his wisdom ; that 
the Lord as the Word successively accommo- 
dated His Divine Truth to this declining per- 
ception ; and that when the children of Israel 
were chosen to represent a " holy nation," 
and a " royal priesthood," man had arrived at 
a most external state in regard to religion, in 
which the things of the Word could only be 
believed so far as they were presented to the 



BISTOB Y OF BE VELATION. 101 

outward senses. The Church of heavenly im- 
pulse passed awa} r , and the Church of faith 
succeeded; this declined, and the Church of 
mere external obedience followed, and as this 
declined the semblance of a Church was main- 
tained through the miraculously enforced obe- 
dience of Israel. In all this time, and by suc- 
cessive accommodations to these states of de- 
cline in human perception, the Word was 
beingmade flesh, and the Lord was descending 
with His children into the plane of sensuous 
life. In man's innocence the Lord walked 
and talked with him in the garden of his soul. 
In man's state of spiritual charity, the Lord 
revealed himself to the understanding through 
the natural representations in which man 
could perceive the spiritual subjects. In the 
obscuration of charity He kept alive some 
faith in his Word, and some knowledge of 
Himself as God-man, through the manifesta- 
tion of the Angel of His presence. In man's 
natural rebellion and worldliness He followed 
him with wonders, and punishments and re- 
wards, and kept him in a sort of enforced obe- 
dience. And when man became wholly car- 
nal, so that even Divine truth addressed to the 
natural mind lost its power over human con- 
duct, through the separation of his heart 



102 HISTORY OF REVELATION. 

from Divine goodness, the Word was made 
flesh, and exhibited in the form of man, and 
in the Divine conduct of human life before the 
very senses of men. 

In each of these successive manifestations 
of the Word it had been invested with some- 
thing of man, clothed with forms derived from 
the state of human reception, until in the 
Jewish church it was so accommodated to 
their " froward " hearts, that they were al- 
lowed to think of God as altogether such an 
one as themselves ; of His law as arbitrary 
command, obedience to which was only to be 
inspired by fear, or hope of temporal pros- 
perity. 

In such a state, so clothed and so regarded, 
Divine Truth is shorn of its power over the 
lives of men. They soon began to stone the 
prophets, and kill those that were sent unto 
them ; till the Divine communication died out 
in Malichi with the promise of the Lord's com- 
ing, with " glad tidings " to those who looked 
unto Him and hoped in Him for deliverance, 
and with woe to those who feared Him not. 
When that night also reached its culmination 
in the perversion of the law through tradition, 
then He did come by another, and the lowest 
and the purest revelation of Divine Truth 



HISTORY OF REVELATION. 103 

then possible. He raised up, when " there 
was no man," a man of His own by immedi- 
ate impregnation of a virgin, and Divine Con- 
ception ; and manifested the Word in the flesh 
for the redemption promised from the begin- 
ning. 

Thus, through all the dispensations of the 
Church it was the Father following the prodi- 
gal, working and waiting in Divine patience 
till he came to the swine-husks ; where and 
when, for the first time mightily, He could 
reach forth His hand to help. When man, 
therefore, had put darkness for light, and per- 
verted even the precepts of the Decalogue till 
they reached no real plane of human life, it 
was time for the Lord to reveal Himself anew. 
When there was no medium by which the 
Divine love could reach the corrupt heart to 
quicken it, it was necessary for the Lord to 
assume a new medium by which to dispense 
His life and light with power. This was the 
occasion of the Incarnation. Divine truth 
was well nigh lost to human apprehension in 
the external rites and ceremonies, which from 
merely sensual perception in the Church were 
loved for no significance of their own, but 
from an idolatrous, sensuous devotion. Lower 
than this the Divine truth with men cannot 



104 HISTORY OF REVELATION. 

exist, and profaned in the Church it was shorn 
of its power. The ends of salvation required 
a Divine revelation which should under-reach 
man's rebellion, and dispense the Divine truth 
with power of help to his very lowest sensuous 
state. 

The Lord as the Word was made flesh, and 
addressed Himself to this sensual intellect in 
man; and thus came into the world to be seen 
with the eyes and heard with the ears, so that 
if only through the medium of the senses 
mankind might learn anew to comprehend 
something of the Divine love and wisdom, and 
from understanding progress to love and do 
His precepts, and live. The spirit of the Most 
High clothed itself in with humanity in the 
womb of a virgin, and took human nature 
into conjunction with His invisible and unap- 
proachable essence, and thus stretched forth 
an arm into the natural world by which to sub- 
due man's enemies and mediate to his lowest 
necessities, the Divine spirit of life and all 
might. This was that coming of the Word 
for which preparation had been made from 
the first; for this, all who loved God, and 
hoped in his redemption, in every dispensation 
of the Church, were taught to look ; and unto 
this end they were preserved in the world of 



HIS TOR Y OF BE VELATION. 105 

spirits, to be delivered when He should come 
in the fullness of time. This manifestation 
of the Word by Incarnation was more than a 
manifestation; it was an ultimate exercise of 
Divine power far the conversion of the race ; 
a conflict and a victory. 

Whatever difficulties may belong to your 
idea of the Incarnation and the glorification of 
the Lord's humanity, it is sufficient to observe 
that His first advent was His manifestation 
through the medium of the humanity assumed ; 
and that it was required by, and was adequate 
to, the sensuous state of mankind. Men had 
lost the power to conceive spiritually of the 
Divine truth ; they perverted every command- 
ment of God to the favoring of their own 
councils, and there was among them no me- 
dium of Divine help. Then the Lord raised 
up a manhood of his own which should reveal 
His Divine goodness and wisdom to disciples 
and enemies, and thus came into the world. 
His coming, because it was a revelation of His 
truth and power to the lowest, and even to de- 
mons, brought judgment and redemption. 
Judgment to evil men and evil spirits; redemp- 
tion, not from the price and penalty of sin, but 
from the compelling power of our spiritual 
enemies, and from the hand of them that hate 



106 HIS TOE Y OF RE VELA TIOJST. 

us. Seeing Him they saw the truth of Divine 
love as no words could present it to them. He 
brought the Father forth to view, and mani- 
fested the begetting and sustaining love of 
God in the begotten and sustained righteous- 
ness and power of His own personal presence. 
The result was twofold : deliverance and sal- 
vation to them that received Him; judgment 
and subordination to them that worshiped 
the prince of this world. He " cast out the 
spirits with His w 7 ord," that men, " being de- 
livered from their enemies, might serve Him 
in righteousness and holiness before Him all 
the days of their life." What He came to do 
He finished; and did it perfectly. He came to 
manifest Himself to the sensuous thought of 
men by appearing bodily before their senses, 
and working before their eyes the works of 
God, and exerting in the plane of the natural 
mind, upon both the willing and the unwilling, 
the power of God unto judgment or salvation. 
For this His incarnation was necessary; this, 
in His incarnation, He perfectly accomplished. 
This was the be^innins; of a New Church. 
The Lord provided in His manifest personal 
advent for the perpetuation of its revelations 
and benefits. The withdrawal of the sensuous 
image of His presence was a necessary part of 



HISTOB T OF BE V ELATION. 107 

the work ; it was necessary that the power of 
His spirit might be felt "calling all things to 
their remembrance/' whatsoever they had seen 
and heard. The disciples gradually and 
privately gathered together and commenced a 
new Church movement on the basis of these 
remembrances. They preached the Gospel 
and established Churches. They based their 
convictions of the truth of Christianity upon 
what they had seen of the Lord in His mani- 
festation to their sensuous perceptions, and 
what they had realized of his promises in the 
experiences of their natural religious life. 
This was the dispensation of the first advent 
— the acknowledgment of Jesus Christ as the 
Son of God— confession of all the facts of 
the Incarnation as the Gospel of redemption, 
and salvation through obedience to the Lord's 
precepts of life. As its first fruits under the 
inspiration of the Holy Spirit of Christ, there 
grew up the Gospel, as the means of transmit- 
ting its benefits to all generations. And in 
the Gospels we have " God manifest in the 
flesh/' as to all the benefits of such a manifes- 
tation. In the recorded life of Christ the 
Lord makes His first advent to us also. He 
is personally manifest to our sensuous thought 
therein, and no other such advent or manifes- 



103 H1STOB Y OF BE VELATION. 

tation is needed. If He were here, present in 
the flesh, He would show us no other than that 
which is shown in the record of the life on 
earth whereby he glorified His humanity, and 
made it to have life in itself as the Father hath 
life Himself. If we had reclined with John 
on Jesus' breast, or washed His feet, like the 
woman, with our tears, we would have been no 
better disciples than it is possible for us to be 
now. With the Gospel of His first advent we 
have that advent and need no further such 
manifestation, nor could we be benefited by 
such. If we see no beauty in Him to desire 
Him now, we may know we would have been 
among those who said, "Thou art mad, and 
hast a devil." If we find no power of healing 
in His Divine precepts, neither would we were 
He bodily present, and should we follow in the 
throng and touch the hem of His garment. 
No! the Lord makes His first advent to every 
man to whom the Gospel of His Incarnation 
comes ; and the way in which we treat Him in 
this, precisely corresponds to the way in 
which we would treat Him if He should reveal 
Himself again in the flesh. 

But it was part of the Gospel of the Incarna- 
tion that the Lord should come again ; that the 
Christian Church should fall away, and its un- 







BIS TOE Y OF BE VELATION. 109 

derstanding of the Word fail, and its love wax 
cold, and then He would come as the Son of 
Man in the clouds of heaven. The twenty- 
fourth chapter of the Gospel by Matthew sets 
forth, under the symbolism of war, conflict 
and distress of nations, and commotion in the 
heavens and the earth, the gradual decline and 
corruption of the Church of His first coming. 
The symbolism used is the common and sug- 
gestive imagery of the old Prophets, and can 
only be misunderstood by a blind determina- 
tion to literalism. Literally understood, it 
cannot be understood at all. Spiritually un- 
derstood, these predictions show : First, that 
the Church would begin not to know what was 
good and true, and be filled with disputations ; 
second, that it would come to despise good and 
truth in its thirst for dominion; third, that in 
heart it would deny and profane them. 

To any one at all familiar with the contro- 
versies that came in with the third century, 
and the subsequent history of sophistries and 
corruptions of doctrine, even to the time of 
the Protestant Reformation, and with the vin- 
dictive debates and persecutions which followed 
that crisis, there is needed no further illustra- 
tion of the prophecy than the facts furnished. 
In the symbolic language of the prophecy it 



110 HISTORY OF BE VELATION. 

is said, " Immediately after the tribulation of 
those days the sun shall be darkened, the moon 
shall not give her light, and the stars shall 
fall from heaven." The same thing was said 
by Joel of the state of the Church at the time 
of the Lord's first coming, and Peter, as we 
know, applied the prophecy to the Jewish 
Church. It was the sun and moon of the 
Church that were darkened then ; and this is 
the meaning in the second prophecy. Not the 
dissolution of the heavens, but the wreck of 
all that is good and true — love, faith and 
knowledge of heavenly mysteries — when the 
Church is in ruins, is what is meant by these 
signs. When the " Sun of Righteousness " 
sheds the light of His countenance in vain up- 
on an apostate Church, the thick clouds of its 
sophistries and perversions of truth intercept- 
ing its quickening heat and light; when the 
moon of true faith cannot penetrate the intel- 
lectual obscurity with its reflected light ; when 
the stars of heavenly knowledge are no more 
lights in the firmament of the Church, then 
must the Lord come with a new manifestation 
of His goodness, and put forth with new power 
the activities of His spirit. 

Catholics will not own it of themselves that 
such things were ever true ; nor will Protes- 



HISTORY OF REVELATION. Ill 

tants own it ; and it is very natural that they 
should not. But Catholics assert it of Protes- 
tants ; and Protestants assert it of Catholics ; 
and very eminent theologians of each school 
have proved the corruptions of faith and char- 
ity in the other. No unprejudiced man of this 
day need fear to look back into the past and 
see that what each said of the other w 7 as true 
of both. In the Church, both Catholic and 
Protestant, at the middle of the eighteenth 
century, we behold a Christianity paralyzed in 
its most vital part ; even the activity of con- 
troversy died out save as to its political signifi- 
cance. The people debased and misguided ; 
the courts vicious and sensual ; the priests sunk 
in a godless epicureanism, or an equally god- 
less intellection ; religion almost non-existent 
apart from the drowsy formalism that had 
usurped the holy place. Surely such a state 
of things answering to the spirit of the pro- 
phecy, was an occasion in the Church for the 
Lord's coming, or for a new manifestation of 
Himself. 

What the manifestationof the Word in the 
flesh could not prevent, its repetition could not 
cure. What was needed, then, for the revival 
of the Christian Church, was not a second 
personal appearing of the Lord, but such a 



112 HISTORY OF REVELATION. 

revelation of the Word as would fulfill and carry 
forward the work of His first advent. It 
needed that the Lord should, as He promised, 
open the things which He had said and done in 
parables, and " show us plainly of the Father." 
In His first coming He gave us the letter, His 
second coming was to give us the Spirit of 
Truth and reveal His genuine glory and power 
in the clouds of the letter. And the event has 
proved the Apocalypse in the revelation at this 
day of the Spiritual sense of the Word. The 
glory of genuine truth shining through the 
types and appearances of the letter of the Word 
is "the glory of the Son of Man in the clouds." 
The clouds of earth are not the Lord's chariot, 
any more than the " white horse," upon which 
he is said to come, is a charger of earthly stock ; 
these are signs. They signify the literal im- 
ages and representatives by which the divine 
truth is mediated and embodied in earthly lan- 
guage. The types and symbols in the letter 
of Holy Scripture are called" clouds of heaven," 
because they are taken up out of the natural 
mind of men, as the clouds are lifted from the 
earth — and because they veil, while they con- 
tain, the heavenly meaningof the Divine Word, 
and thus mediate its lii^ht to the natural mind. 
It was thus that the phraseology of the old 



HISTOB Y OF BE VELATION. 11C 

prophets bid from the eyes of the Jews what 
to the apostles they revealed ; and it is on ac- 
count of this peculiar quality of the letter of the 
written Word, as veiling deeper things within 
it, that it is in all the Scriptures compared to a 
cloud. " It was symbolized by the cloud which 
rested upon Mount Sinai, concealing the 
Lord from their view, up into which Moses 
was called when the Word of the Old Testa- 
ment began to be revealed. A similar cloud, 
infolding a fire within itself, was shown to Eze- 
kiel in holy vision as the Word of the Lord 
first came to Him. And the same thing w r as 
signified by that cloud which received the Di- 
vine form of the Savior out of the sight of the 
apostles, as they stood, being in vision, gazing 
up into heaven, as he ascended from them on 
the Mount of Olives." The clouds represent- 
ed the letter of the written Word unto which 
they were remanded when He withdrew from 
them His visible presence. It was the visual 
image of Him which they retained, and the 
remembrance of His words and works, which 
under His inspiration, they wrote, and testified 
in the Gospel for us — this image of His life 
with them and among men, together with all 
the Word which testifies of Him, w r as repre- 
sented by the vision of a cloud in which they 



114 HISTORY OF BE VELATION. 

saw Him ascend, and in which in like manner 
it w r as said they should see Him come again. 

Now the Lord makes His appearance in 
these clouds, the types and symbols of the 
letter of His Word, as soon as the heavenly 
meaning of the symbols are made clear, and 
they all are seen to relate to Him. In the 
revelation of the spiritual sense of the Word, 
which is everywhere veiled in its letter, every 
type, every figure, and every circumstance, in 
history, or psalm, or prophecy, is seen to relate 
to the Lord, and represent His work for and 
within human souls. And it is in the accom- 
plishment of this purely Divine work of open- 
ing the Holy Scriptures, and revealing for the 
Church the existence, nature, and particular 
truths of their spiritual sense, that the Lord 
comes in the clouds of heaven. He comes, for 
the whole Word reveals Him, and His work. 
He comes in the clouds because it is the images 
of the letter of the word, which, being inter- 
preted, reveal Him. This is known b2cause 
it is an accomplished fact, and the event, as I 
said, has explained and proved the Apocalypse. 

This spiritual coming of the Lord, and rev- 
elation of the spiritual and eternal glory of the 
written Word, as containing the living Word 
Himself, has been accomplished by means of 



HIS TOBY OF REVELATION. 115 

a man, called and prepared to receive and ex- 
pound the Science of Correspondences, the 
genuine doctrine of the spiritual senses of the 
Word, and the laws of life in the spiritual 
world. Being accomplished, it carries its own 
evidences within itself, and appeals not to hu- 
man evidence, but to its own light and power, 
for the authentication of its genuineness. The 
giving of the Word was accommodated to 
lower and lower states of humanity till man 
reached his lowest perversity; then it put 
forth its power for his redemption, converting 
and turning the spiritual course of the race. 
In the Gospel of that work and the prophecy 
of its fulfillment in the full and crowning man- 
ifestation of the Divine meaning in all the 
history of the Church, the literal Word was 
complete and the books closed. When there- 
fore there was need of light and doctrine for 
the guidance of rational thought, and prepara- 
tion in natural science and reason for the rev- 
elation of that light, the Lord, by his own 
mercy and wise means, " loosed the seals and 
opened the book." Now it is allowable and 
possible in the Church " to enter intellectually 
into the mysteries of faith," and to confirm 
the doctrines of the spiritual sense of the word 
in reason and life. 



116 HISTOR Y OF BE VELATION. 

The Paradise which man lost is to be re- 
gained in the New Jerusalem, which comes 
down from heaven, in the heavenly doctrines 
of truth and principles of life revealed for 
men on earth. The Holy City or Divine sys- 
tem of doctrine contained in and revealed from 
the internal senses of the Word is with men ; 
they may study and understand its truths; 
and receiving and loving them, and living ac- 
cording to them, abide in the city by its river 
of the water of life, healed with the leaves of 
the Tree of Life, and sustained by its fruits. 

If this general outline of the history of God's 
Word to man has presented anything with 
clearness, it is this : first, that the Lord always 
reveals His Word in forms adequate to meet 
the spiritual states of men as they change; and 
second, that any and every form of revelation 
must be such as to respect the freedom of man. 
''There is not, there never was, and never will 
be, any religious truth ever given to man which 
was not and will not be so given that, while 
he who loves it may be convinced of its truth 
on rational grounds, they who have no love 
for it may reject it on grounds which seem to 
them equally rational." And it will be so 
with the last and crowning revelation of all; 
while it is the manifestation of genuine spirit- 






HISTOB T OF RE VELATXON. 117 

ual truths to spiritual reason in man, it can on- 
ly commend itself " to whosoever will take the 
water of life freely." It comes to bless ; not 
to curse, as it must do with all who should 
accept its teachings for any other reasons than 
those of love for the goodness to which its 
truths lead. The revelation of the spiritual 
sense of the Holy Word does not abrogate its 
literal sense, but vivifies and fills it with new 
meaning and power ; it comes, opening in all 
the Scriptures the things concerning the Lord's 
work of redemption, regeneration and salva- 
tion, in all dispensations of the Church, in all 
planes of human life ; it comes as the crown 
of all forms of revelation to gather them into 
its light and open their true character and 
spiritual meaning. It comes, therefore, to 
bless and do good, to enlarge men's views of 
truth, their experience of goodness, their 
sphere of use, and their capacity of enjoyment ; 
and to all who love these things, it is able to 
authenticate its Divine mission, to justify the 
Providence of God in the past, to gather into 
its embrace the good and the true of all for- 
mer dispensations, and open out into a career 
of illimitable progress. Amen ! 



y 



THE PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTA- 
TION: OP THE PEAL OP 
APPARENT IN THE 
SOPIPTUPES. 

With the pure thou wilt show thyself pure ; and with the froward 
thou wilt show thyself froward.— Ps. xviii : 2G. 

If we admit the principle that every Di- 
vine communication to man must be adapted 
in its forms of expression to the states of life 
and thought of those to whom it is given, we 
shall see in the text the explanation of many 
literal peculiarities of Holy Scripture. We 
are perfectly familiar with the law that ob- 
jects of thought, quite as much as objects of 
sight, must appear according to the intellect- 
ual training and spiritual attitude of the par- 
ticipant. Each man can see only what his 
previous course of life and habit of thought 
enables him to see. Whatever lies wholly 
above and outside of this previous preparation 

(118) 



PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 119 

is lost to him. Whatever comes, by symbol 
and accommodated expression within his range, 
must at first show itself, according to his own 
state — that is, the total result of his previous 
life and habit. " That only can we see which 
we are," says Emerson, " and which we make. 
The weaver sees gingham; the broker sees the 
stock-list ; the politician, the ward and county 
votes ; the poet sees the horizon, and the 
shores of matter lying on the sky, the inter- 
action of elements — the large effect of laws 
corresponding to the inward laws which he 
knows, and so are but a kind of extension of 
himself." This is the law for a generation as 
well as the individual ; it sees according to its 
prevailing life and habit of thought. In the 
childhood of the world, the w T ise taught the 
mysteries of life in myths; in an evil age of 
prowess and physical strength these degener- 
ate into heroic stories ; in times of popular 
sensuality, the remains of wisdom are veiled 
and preserved in a spectacular ritual. The 
intellectual vigor of New England in the old 
days exercised itself in the severe logic of the 
Puritan divines ; an enervated society to-day, 
used to sensational novels and plays and news- 
papers, demands a sensational pulpit. With 
a .sense of freedom it asks deep questions; but 



120 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 

unused to application, it will not weigh deep 
answers. It demands what lies within the 
range of its habit ; even the new in science 
must be "popularized," and the plausable 
often answers all the purposes of demonstra- 
tion. Thus it is that every generation, as well 
as every individual, must see with its own 
eyes ; and that which would lift it up, must 
come down within the range of its vision. 
Even then it will not see that which is pre- 
sented as it is ; but at first according to its 
previous habit of thought and course of life. 
The actual must so appear, however, to be 
acknowledged at all ; and if so appearing, it 
brings to the observer changes of life, it may 
in that way prepare him to behold the real. 
The law is universal and necessary in the 
nature of man. 

Now apply this principle to the explanation 
of God's verbal revelation in the Scriptures, 
and we shall see at once why with the pure He 
must show Himself pure, and with the fro- 
ward He must show Himself froward. God 
is what He is, and Divine Truth is one thing 
and not another ; but every manifestation of 
God, and every communication of truth, must 
be accommodated in its forms of expression to 
the state of life and habit of thought of those 



PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 121 

to whom it is given. The New Church ap- 
plies this principle to the interpretation of the 
Bible, and thus disarms skepticism of its 
objection. For, in addition to the general 
modifications in the form of revelation which 
we recognized in a glance at the history of 
the successive dispensations of the Church, it 
is apparent that all revelation must have its 
human as well as its Divine side, and its 
apparent as well as its genuine truths. It is 
to be expected, therefore, that much of the 
letter of Scripture, being an accommodation of 
truth to the " froward " heart of man, will 
present only appearances of truth. In itself 
it is what it is, divine from heaven; but in its 
letter it is what they were to whom it was 
given. Written otherwise at the first it would 
have been written to no one, and could not 
have insured even its own preservation. On 
the one hand it is truth, as the Jews and early 
disciples of the Lord could alone apprehend 
it ; on the other, it is truth as apprehended by 
angels. Outwardly it is, much of it, froward 
to the froward ; inwardly it is pure to the 
pure. 

To the eager waking child, all alive with 
the new discovery that it is growing light, and 
plying you with questions as to whence it 



122 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 

comes, you show the rising sun. You tell 
him that every morning the sun climbs up 
the eastern sky and rides through the heavens. 
This is only the appearance of the fact ; but 
there is a reality within the appearance, and 
truth in what you say. So you teach the 
vicious, lying boy that it is wicked to do so, 
and that God is angry with the wicked, and 
punishes them. It is not the real truth ; but 
it is the best expression of the truth for the 
boy. It is the clearest presentation of the 
whole certainty of moral retribution you can 
make to him. What you say will not bear 
rational criticism, but there is a truth within 
and back of what you say, that no criticism 
can dislodge, just as the law of planetary 
motion is really involved in the apparent sun- 
rise. 

So we say of all Holy Scripture as the verbal 
revelation of Divine truth to man's froward 
state. It is adapted to the mental vision and 
moral position of those to whom it was given. 
It takes on, therefore, in much of its teach- 
ing, a like froward form ; but the" it " back of 
the form is genuine truth. The Spiritual real- 
ity is hid in the appearance. And the same 
law which rules of necessity in the giving of 
revelation, rules also in man's understanding 






PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 123 

of it. To the pure, that pure and holy wisdom 
which lies back of the fro ward showing is 
revealed. It is not innocence, but the lack of 
innocence which sees only immorality in the 
Bible ; and it is not wisdom but empty con- 
ceit which finds only foolishness in it. This 
law would still be in force if the pure Divine 
truth that is in the Bible were revealed to us 
afresh in Nineteenth Century English, and 
according to the habit of thought of this gen- 
eration. It would still be froward to the fro- 
ward and pure to the pure. Men's difficulties 
might be different, but they would not be less 
great. The genuine truths and laws of Spir- 
itual life, are already within the appearances 
of Holy Scripture; just as the truths of science 
are in the apparent order, and equally appa- 
rent disorder of nature ; just as the laws of life 
and providence are hid in the involved and per- 
plexing but steadily advancing drama of his- 
tory. 

Now I wish to illustrate this principle of 
Divine adaptation in the explanation of (a) 
the apparent contradictions cf the Bible, and 
(b) the representations of God's part in the 
wars of the Jews. 

1. The apparent contradiction in the rep- 
resentation of the Divine Character. It is 



124 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 

said of the Lord : " Fury is not in me " (Isa. 
xxviii: 4) ; and again, " God is angry with 
the wicked every day " (Ps. vii : 11). Here 
is a direct contradiction as out of the mouth 
of God; and everybody knows these are not 
exceptional texts. We are told that God is 
angry and that He is love itself; that He is 
wrathful and kind ; revengeful and merciful ; 
provokable and unchangeable ; that He re- 
pents and repents not; that He curses His 
people and punishes them, and that He is 
kind to the unthankful and the evil, and His 
tender mercies over all his works ; that He 
forms light and creates darkness ; makes peace 
and creates evil; that "He hath mercy on 
whom He will, and whom He will he harden- 
eth." One great question in to-day's relig- 
ious inquiry is, whether or not there is an order 
underlying this apparent confusion. How are 
these contradictions to be harmonized with the 
Divine Inspiration of the Scriptures? Is there 
a necessity in the nature of things connecting 
them with a Divine revelation to man on earth? 
Or does their existence in the Bible vacate its 
claim to Inspiration? 

Modern criticism has brought these contra- 
dictory representations in regard to the Di- 
vine character into sharper outline, showing 



PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 125 

their connection with the ages in which they 
were written, and with subsequent dogma. 
But beyond this it has done nothing whatever, 
except to deny in the name of reason that a 
Divine and Infallible God can be both love 
and w r rath, or mislead His children by repre- 
senting Himself in contradictions. This, 
however, is only a negation ; and true progress 
never ends in denial. It never closes its 
eyes and returns to its ignorance ; but pushes 
onto a new and higher affirmation of sufficient 
breadth to illustrate its difficulties. The his- 
tories of nations carry us through no period 
when there was not universally the idea of 
God, and a consciousness or a belief, both in 
His pleasure and displeasure, in His disposi- 
tion and power to reward and punish. And 
this universal fact exalts the statements con- 
cerning the love and wrath of God, in our 
own Scripture, above the accidents of nation- 
ality, and shows them to belong to universal 
religious consciousness. We may deny the 
apparent contradiction as a reality, but w r e 
cannot deny it as an appearance. And its 
universality as an appearance should encour- 
age us to believe in some underlying law and 
necessity, and to seek for its discovery. 

We have the help of analogy here. Con- 



136 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 

tradictions are not peculiar to the Bible. 
Nature is full of paradoxes. There are com- 
plications, and what appear to be contradic- 
tions, everywhere. All knowledge that the 
apparent is not the real, is a discovery. It took 
long, very long, to find out that natural phe- 
nomena are not the result of the capricious 
tricks of pleased or insulted deities. And 
when the old philosophers began to deny su- 
perstitions, founded on the appearances of irreg- 
ularity and disorder, their first impulse was to 
say " that nature is seen to do all things of her- 
self, without the interference of the gods." It 
took long, very long, to learn the laws which 
are the principles of order underlying the ap- 
parent disorder of the universe of forces and 
things. Very gradually, as facts accumulated 
and confronted one another, it became possible 
for a great mind here and there to grasp the 
whole in its connections, and announce a uni- 
versal principle including the eccentricities, 
exceptions, and contradictions in their relations 
to the accustomed order of things. Only in 
our day has it become known that human 
society also may be studied in the same way ; 
that the apparently irregular and incalculable 
movements of human free agents, in their drift 
and results, are subject to laws so universal and 



PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 127 

constant that they may be estimated at long 
range with astonishing accuracy. Such has 
been the progress of science, a constant dem- 
onstration of the play of law amid seemingly 
chaotic and accidental facts, and successively 
broader and more comprehensive generaliza- 
tions of law, as exceptions . were noted and 
known. And so completely has the principle 
become established, that nature is one orderly, 
continuous, and progressive whole, that the im- 
pulse of science is to amass facts as discordant 
and contradictory as possible, that they may 
open the way to wider and ever-widening gen- 
eralizations of natural law. No one feels any 
uneasiness because half the scientific fraternity 
are searching with microscope and telescope 
for unknown facts. No one fears that their 
discovery will either do injury to science or 
disprove the existence of the universe. And 
this confidence rests simply on the conviction 
that in all, under all, over all, are universal 
principles of order. 

So must it be, and so will it be, in theolo^v. 
What we ought to expect, and what we ought 
to push forward to, is the discovery of the 
universal spiritual truths and positive laws 
that are back of and constant in the appear- 
ances of revelation and the facts of religious 
consciousness. The historical criticism of our 



128 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 

day which looks so threatening, which brings 
to light such apparently mischievous and de- 
structive facts, has only served for the most 
part to bring out the irregular, inconstant, and 
contradictory things of Divine revelation, and 
set them in most damaging antagonism. Shall 
w r e refuse to look at the facts? No, for along 
that way lies relapse into ignorance. Shall 
we deny all revelation, and rest there? No, 
for there is no rest. Revelation itself is a fact 
that will not be denied any more than the out- 
ward world of the senses. What, then, should 
we do but reach out to, and pray for, those 
Divine and spiritual unities which comprehend 
and harmonize all seemingdiscrepenciesinthe 
revealed and recorded ways of God to man. 
This we must do. 

Coming, then, to the contradictions of the 
Bible concerning the character and disposition 
of God, let us rise from the letter to the spirit, 
and inquire what is the whole purport of the 
revelation. The truth that God is love is 
really the teaching of the whole of Divine 
revelation, when direct teaching respecting 
God is given. For the Scriptures are not 
merely a revelation of God. They are also a 
revelation of man ; of the states of good and 
evil in man, and their consequences. But the 



PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 129 

whole spirit of the Word breathes one truth, 
with respect to God Himself and His altitude 
toward man, namely, that He is love itself — 
pure, perfect and unselfish love. And this is 
what reason demands. It refuses to believe 
that there can be in the Divine nature any- 
thing answering to anger, hatred and revenge. 
It refuses to believe that he is changeable or 
swayed by likes and dislikes. However men 
may feel toward Him, or however they may 
feel and act towards each other, it is not in the 
nature of God possible that He should feel 
anything but the most unselfish and constant 
love toward them. We may hate Him and 
His laws, but He never hated nor desired to 
punish us. His laws are only the wise ways 
of His love with us. They are the ways of 
His infinite wisdom, and are good for us, and 
necessary for us, because they are the true 
order of our life, the only means to the per- 
fection and happiness His love has ordained 
for us. And because His laws are laws of love 
they change not. They are the eternal order 
of spiritual life, revealed and written in the 
Word only that we may know them and do 
them. All the precepts and laws which are 
summed up in love to God and the neighbor, 
are enjoined upon us, s'tnply because they are 
9 



130 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 

laws, that is, the ways or true methods of 
spiritual life. They are commanded because 
they are written in our spiritual organism, and 
are the only ways by which we may grow into 
harmony and conjunction with God and enter 
into His joy. They are the ordinances of 
infinite wisdom for the ends of infinite love. 

Such is the love of God and the wisdom of 
His laws on the divine side and to the spiritu- 
al view ; but how must they appear to the 
diseased and abnormal vision of disobedience ? 
" To the pure thou wilt show thyself pure ; 
to the froward thou wilt show thyself fro- 
ward." It is an unfailing law that the appear- 
ance of spiritual truth, and of spiritual things 
generally, is and must ever be in perfect cor- 
respondence with the states of the percipient 
subjects. If that is a state of order, of good 
disposition, and rational honesty, spiritual 
things will be seen and appreciated, when re- 
vealed, in their own light. If this state be 
one of disorder it will reflect itself back upon 
God and spiritual laws, and see in them only 
hatred and vindictive punishment. The world 
is full of illustrations of this law, and like 
every true generalization it solves mysteries. 

Take, for example, the laws of physical 
health. The man who is wise to learn them 



PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 131 

and obey them, and has become through obedi- 
ence healthy and vigorous, not only appreci- 
ates those laws, but rejoices in their benifi- 
cence. He sees that they are wise,and ordered for 
comfort and use. He sees that even the pain 
that follows disobedience is part of their be- 
nificent order to save the reckless from self-de- 
struction. But the man who has broken all 
the physical commandments, and become a 
body of disease, looks upon nature as a hard 
mother, and her laws as a very arbitrary set 
of regulations. This is only saying, what we 
have seen to be true, that every one sees the 
wisdom and benificence of a truth, according 
to his own state with respect to it. The same 
truth does not appear the same to persons in 
different states. To one it stands out clearly 
and defined in its grandeur and relations ; he 
is delighted with it. Another only dimly ap- 
prehends it. To another it has no signifi- 
cance; it has neither form nor comeliness that 
he should desire it. To another, who has 
been acting or believing contrary to it, it is 
positively hateful. It does not appear to him 
as truth, but as a falsity. It is really the 
same truth that presents such various aspects 
to different individuals; the cause of the vari- 
ous appearances is not changes in the truth, 



132 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 

but the reflection of their different mental 
states. 

Now, if this be a law of the human under- 
standing with respect to truth, and of the 
human will with respect to goodness, it ex- 
plains the contradictions of the Bible. For 
the Bible is a revelation of God and the laws 
of spiritual life, and the consequences of obe- 
dience or disobedience, to all sorts and condi- 
tions of men; and the truths respecting these 
things to reach them at all must appear vari- 
ously to their different states, and quite oppo- 
sitely to the evil and the good. Accordingly, 
there are in the Word both genuine truths 
and apparent truths. Truth as it is, and is ap- 
prehensible to enlightened reason; and truth 
as it appears, as it can only appear, to sensu- 
ous thought. That "God is good to all, and 
His mercies over all his works" is a genuine 
truth. That He is angry with the wicked and 
punishes them, is an apparent truth. God is 
goodness itself, and truth itself; He desires 
the spiriutal regeneration and happiness of all 
His children; He has so created man that he 
may by orderly and obedient observance of 
the laws of his spiritual nature, become con- 
joined to Him in reciprocal love and use. 
These are genuine truths. They are abund- 



PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 133 

antly taught in plain declarations and precepts. 
They are satisfactory to enlightened reason. 
They are the very spirit and life of the Word; 
and its spiritual or internal sense teaches 
nothing contrary to them. But how would 
they appear to an idolatrous, self-seeking, 
sensuous people? How would they appear 
to a people who had no conception of love 
but as self-love; no idea of happiness but 
lust; no idea of law but as license to do 
their own sweet will ? If Divine love w r ould 
reach and restrain such a people, and lead 
them to compel themselves to obey even the 
very lowest forms of the laws of their spiritual 
life, must He not appeal to their self-love and 
to their sense of pain ? The first truth for 
such to learn, the first truth for us all to learn, 
is that the laws of God are the laws of man's 
life ; that they are all keyed to beneficent re- 
sults ; and that if they are disobeyed they will 
work most terrible spiritual mischief. The 
punishment which attends the violation of 
spiritual laws is not less beneficent than the 
pain that attends the violation of physical law. 
It is itself a revelation of Divine mercy. But 
if denounced against the wicked, how should 
they perceive it other than as a threat of anger 
and wrath. If not made to realize it, they 



134 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 

would not heed it ; and if brought clean home 
to them, they could not understand it as any- 
thing but the punishment inflicted by an of- 
fended Deity, How is it with ourselves ? When 
we have broken the sum of the commandments, 
and have not done to men as we would they 
should do to us, is not the first keen pang of 
remorse a sense of Divine displeasure ? How 
is it in the whole course of our experience of 
the consequences of disorder ? Do we not con- 
tinually complain that the laws of Providence 
are unjust; that the ways of God are not 
equal? In this is latent the whole appear- 
ance of the anger of God. God is good, but 
He is true ; His truth is the law of human life 
and happiness, and it is good. This is the 
reality. But the appearance is, to those who 
obey the law of life, that God is good and His 
ways merciful ; to the evil and disobedient, 
that God is kind only to those who fear and 
obey Him, and is angry with, and punishes 
those who do not. 

Can we not see, therefore, that the con- 
tradictory representations concerning God's 
character, have their ground and necessity in 
the spiritual law that men must severally see 
truth according to their state ? To reveal 
Himself and His laws to all men, the evil as 



PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 135 

well as the good, the sensual and depraved as 
well as the rational, God must necessarily be 
represented variously and even oppositely. 
There have been whole generations of people, 
there are now in our own cities whole classes 
of people, to whom the revelation of the real- 
ity of God, and of spiritual law could be 
made no otherwise. If the selfish man resists 
or punishes any one, it is from anger ; he is 
furious and acts wildly from revenge. If he 
have an idea of God, he can only conceive of 
Him as enraged and punishing men, as he 
himself would do if they had transgressed 
his law. Fear is the only sentiment in such 
a man open to the Divine appeal. To fear 
accordingly the Lord appeals ; if by any 
means the disobedient may be led to observe 
the laws of righteousness and begin the work 
of reformation. The fact is, that we are de- 
pendent upon God, and our happiness depend- 
ent upon obedience to His spiritual laws. 
This eternal necessity appears to obscure, sen- 
suous and wicked minds as the Divine om- 
nipotence, pleased or displeased, rewarding or 
punishing. The appearance is the necessary 
aspect of a reality. It is not, therefore, to be 
destroyed with the simple-minded; though it 
is to be avoided as a doctrine of the Church. 



136 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 

We do very well to say the sun rises and sets. 
We cannot very well say otherwise. It is not 
the fact, but the appearance of the fact. It 
will always be true to the senses. And so 
forever, and forever, it will be true that " the 
fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." 

2. Another class of apparent contradictions, 
is illustrated in the representations of moral re- 
sponsibility. It is said in the decalogue, " I 
the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting 
the iniquity of the fathers upon the children 
unto the third and fourth generation of them 
that hate me" (Ex. xx 5) ; and again, " The 
soul that sinneth it shall die. The son shall 
not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall 
the father bear the iniquity of the son." 
These seemingly contradictory texts are ex- 
plained in the truth which lies back of both, 
and which can only be overlooked by an ex- 
clusive attention to one or the other. 

Nothing can be more obvious than the axiom 
that no man is guilty for what took place be- 
fore he was born. Whatever the truth may 
require us to believe, it certainly does not re- 
quire us to begin with an absurdity. "In 
Adam's fall we sinned all," is a sentiment that 
is repugnant to all rational thought. The 
Scriptures teach that " the iniquity of the 



PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 137 

fathers is visited upon the children," and by a 
very curious perversity of understanding, the 
word "iniquity" has been read to mean pre- 
cisely as though it were " guilt" or "punish- 
ment." It is, however, nothing of the kind. 
Guilt is not transmissible : and it is onlv a 
gross caricature of Divine justice to repre- 
sent it as demanding the punishment of count- 
less posterity for the sin of a single progenitor. 
We are to put utterly away all such ideas of 
" original sin " as define it to be the entailed 
guilt of a transgression over w T hich we had no 
control, and in which we could have no moral 
responsibility. But then, we are not to con- 
clude, on the other hand, that there is no 
hereditary transmission, and that the iniqui- 
ties of the fathers are in no way carried over 
to the children. 

There is a great deal of erroneous thought 
upon this subject from the profound and gen- 
eral ignorance as to the substantial and organic 
form of the human soul. Man is not an ab- 
straction, but a spiritual, organic form. And 
the effect of disobedience to the laws of spiritu- 
al life, is the perversion of the organic func- 
tions of the soul, and consequent deterioration 
of its substantial form. Sin is a spiritual dis- 
ease ; a disease of an immortal organism. And, 



138 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 

therefore, as it becomes deep-seated and cronie 
by disobedience, and is not brought to the heal- 
ing touch of the Divine Physician by repent- 
ance, it issues in confirmed spiritual death. 
Every one writes the record of his own sin, 
and lays up his punishment in his own soul in 
its perverted spiritual forms. Hereditary sin, 
or transmitted guilt, is an idea therefore which 
cannot be expressed except in terms of self- 
contradiction. But hereditary evil is a differ- 
ent thing. It is the transmitted deterioration of 
the substantial human form, the transmission of 
a perverted spiritual organism. It is thus that 
the iniquity of the fathers is visited upon the 
childen. u Transmissive dispositions and pro- 
clivities to evil, coming down a long line of 
tainted ancestry, and gathering strength and 
volume on their way by every generation that 
transmits them, is a fact that is universal, and 
so an irreversible law of human discent." This 
is illustrated not only in that the race lies in 
spiritual darkness, each generation receiving 
from the past its gloomy superstitions and pre- 
dispositions to evil, but also in the persistency 
with which nations and families perpetuate 
their characteristics. Time and culture and 
physical environment exert their modifying 
influence within a certain range, but " during 






PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 130 

three or four generations, and, indeed, during 
any known historical periods, they never break 
up the type." Types of character, and the 
image of these in the physical form, are trans- 
mitted with such constancy and tendency to 
accumulation, that the trained observer* as soon 
as he looks on the human form, though it be 
that of the sleeping child, knows the race and 
sometimes the tribe and famity to which it be- 
longs. Every fact of observation and exper- 
ience, everv truth of the Word of God, confirms 
the doctrine that the fathers transmit to the 
children, not character, but modifications of 
substantial organic form, which qualify the 
inflowing life and create propensities and pro- 
clivities which had been confirmed in the vol- 
untary lives of the progenitors. The whole 
subject is illustrated in hereditary predisposi- 
tion to diseases of body. Disease is not trans- 
mitted ; but a perverted organism, which under 
the excitement resulting from carelessness, or 
from favoring abuses, is felt as a propensity 
and developed in disease. And every confir- 
mation of the disease results in the still further 
deterioration of the organism and its trasmis- 
sion to its own offspring. A nd this is the real 
image of the corresponding spiritual fact. 
When evil has become fixed in mind and will 



140 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 

and life, and thus perverted the function and 
form of the soul, that determination of the sub- 
stantial spiritual form is carried over to the 
offspring ; and under the excitation of influx 
from attendant evil spirits it is perceived as a 
propensity. And if its transmission is not ar- 
rested by regeneration, through the shunning 
of evil because it is sin, the propensity is trans- 
mitted with accumulated power to the next 
generation. It is thus that we bear in us the 
marks of our lineage in general and in particu- 
lar; thus, that the fathers' sins have impress- 
ed upon our spiritual organism such abnormal 
bent and perversity as had resulted in them- 
selves, and which are felt by us as propensities 
to evil. The Lord is said to visit the iniquity 
of the fathers upon the children in accommo- 
dation to the universal appearance to the nat- 
ural and sensual man, that the consequences of 
his own depravity are visited by omnipotence. 
The real truth which thus appears is, that they 
are actually and necessarily carried over. 

But this is only one side of the truth. If 
this alone were known, it might seem just to 
say, " The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and 
the children's teeth are set on edge." But 
this proverb of Israel the Lord declares to be 
a very foolish meditation for the children. It 



PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 141 

is true that the iniquity of the fathers is 
visited upon the children as predisposition and 
propensity to evil. But the truth is worth 
more as a warning to parents than as an ex- 
cuse for children. For this also is true, that 
those propensities are balanced by angelic and 
Divine influences, so that every soul is free to 
resist them and turn from them. A pro- 
pensity is not a sin ; there is no transmission of 
guilt ; there is no punishment except for the 
evil that passes into deed through our volitions. 
In some sense it is true that we inherit the 
consequences, in a deterioated spiritual or- 
ganism, of the sins of our forefathers. But 
that neither increases nor diminishes our re- 
sponsibility an iota. It has no bearing on 
our eternal destiny unless we are indifferent. 
It may increase the severity of our tempta- 
tions ; but the omnipotence of the Redeemer 
is ours if we choose to resist the propensities 
which we inherit. "Now, lo ! if one beget 
a son that seeth all his father's sins which 
he hath done, and considereth, and doeth not 
such like, he shall not die for the iniquity of 
his father — he shall surely live." You must 
see, therefore, that these two texts are only 
apparently contradictory ; they are harmon- 
ized in the light of a higher law superior to 
either, and immanent in both. 



142 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 

II. We come now to examine in the light 
of the principle of adaptation, the Bible record 
of the wars of extermination against the 
Canaanitish nations, instituted and carried on, 
it would appear, by express command of God. 
The strongest objections are urged against the 
Inspiration of the Mosaic Scriptures on the 
score of these wars. They are denounced as 
measures of enormous cruelty and the most 
indefensible injustice; and the inspiration of 
the record which appears to ascribe them to the 
command of God, is repudiated as impossible 
of Christian belief. I hope to show the value 
of the doctrine announced in making some 
helpful and necessary discriminations here 
also. 

(a.) Consider the human side of these 
w T ars. As facts of history, the wars of the Jews 
were no more pleasing to God than any other 
wars. God is not the author of war. That 
He is so is only an appearance to selfish man, 
in obedience to the universal law of " froward 
to the froward." The devil is universally the 
presiding genius in the declaration of war, and 
field-marshal in its conduct. This is admitting 
all, and more than all, that objectors to revela- 
tion urge against the wars of the Jews. But 
it is admitting only the truth. Every war, in 



PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION, 143 

common with every murder, every lie, every 
slander, every vice of every hue, is instituted 
at the express command of self-love, whose 
essence is the love of evil. It is the " I, my- 
self," principle of the depraved heart that does 
all the wrong and mischief, that incites every 
strife and quarrel, large or small, the world 
over. This is just as true of all the wars per- 
petrated in the name of Christianity as it is of 
the wars of the Jews in the name of God 
Almighty. It is just as true of wars waged 
in the name of freedom as it is of the wars 
of empire. Search throughout universal his- 
tory, and you will find that latent in every 
war as the instigating and controlling motive, 
has been some form or other of the lust of 
dominion or greed of gain^ The wars of the 
Jews had no other origin and inspiration ; 
and in this were essentially like all other wars 
whatsoever. 

You are ready, perhaps, to dispute this, not- 
withstanding all that you know confirms it. 
Out of war has grown progress and the devel- 
opment of human interests; and how is this 
fact to be reconciled with its infernal origin? 
By remembering another fact, that is often 
forgotten, namely, that the devil is not the su- 
preme ruler of the universe, and that his per- 



144 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 

mittecl existence brings him within the police 
regulations of the kingdom of GocL You will 
remember that it is written of God, "If I make 
my bed in hell, behold thou art there." You 
will remember that it is elsewhere said of His 
government, that "He will make the wrath 
of man to praise Him, and the remainder of 
wrath He will restrain." He who put free 
will into the making of man knew the issues 
of it. He knew that man would fall into 
self and separate himself from God; and 
creation was prepared for the event as if it had 
already happened. The eternal, inherent, and 
organic laws of the Divine government cover 
not only its provisions, but its permissions 
also ; and are controlling always. They not 
only lead on to the good provided, but they 
follow into the evil permitted. Yea, they are 
there beforehand, and the limit is set precisely 
at that line where are evolved great, good and 
sublime issues, more than the wit of man con- 
ceived or his motive of self-interest intended. 
There has rarely been found a power of 
holy fervor strong enough to cope with the 
ambition of dominion. In the drama of his- 
tory, the snints have never been able to as- 
sume the leading role. They have rarely had 
the skill, energy, intelligence, force of will, to 



PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 145 

cope with the ambition of dominion, and keep 
it even out of the institutions of the Church, 
The ardor of genuine goodness in men is to the 
fiery zeal of self-love, as the heat of kindling 
embers to that of a seven-times heated fur- 
nace. And this fire of self-love evolves gigan- 
tic powers. The strongest motives sharpen 
wit and concentrate ability ; and the ambition 
to be greatest, richest, or most honored for 
brilliant achievement, is the impelling force 
that develops strength in the complicated ma- 
chinery of government, commerce, and organ- 
ized industries. The faint, feeble beginnings 
of goodness in men are inadequate to kindle 
any such force of character, sagacity, and per- 
sistency. The children of this world are wis- 
er and more efficient in their generation than 
the children of light ; and God turns to use the 
most effective instrumentalities. But the laws 
are ordained beforehand in the constitution of 
man, and of society, which alone can conser- 
vate those fiery impulses and struggling antag- 
onisms, and out of individual self-seeking volve 
the common good. In the permitted existence 
of every evil, and selfish espousal of every 
cause, is set its limit: "Thus far shalt thou go, 
but no farther." 

You must work out for yourselves the ap- 
10 



146 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 

plication of this suggested key to history, for 
we must not suffer ourselves now to be drawn 
too far from the main theme. But they only 
read history aright who thus see God in it ; 
not providing wars and cruel wrongs and in- 
vasion of personal rights, but setting them off 
one against the other, and working out pur- 
poses of which the actors had no conception. 
And this, which is true of all history, is 
especially true of the Children of Israel ; for 
the Mosaic dispensation was essentially dra- 
matic and representative. The Israelites were 
chosen and called, not because of their right- 
eousness and spiritual character, but because 
of the particular bent of their selfishness and 
superstition. It is again and again said of 
them that they were not chosen for their right- 
eousness, nor for their own benefit, as particu- 
lar favorites of God above all people ; but for 
their peculiar fitness to prepare for and to 
represent and typify the ends of God in the 
coming Christianity. There are reasons here 
which cannot be entered at this time, but it is 
manifest upon the face of its history that their 
dispensation was in all respects a representa- 
tive one. And for such a purpose their very 
absence of spirituality and their peculiar ex- 
ternal character especially fitted them. Their 



PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 147 

vanity was flattered with being^ selected by 
the God of their fathers, whom they had for- 
gotten in their idolatry. Their peculiar 
superstitions rendered them susceptible to 
wonders and signs; and their selfish greed 
and fear gave to these signs a controlling 
power over their conduct. Their peculiar ex- 
ternal character rendered them capable, beyond 
those more receptive of the interiors of religion, 
of attending to the minutise of ceremonial wor- 
ship, and of preserving it from a sense of the 
sanctity of its forms. Their "stiff-neckedness," 
their "lack of faith/' and their idolatrous love 
of ceremonials, were the very qualities which 
rendered them capable of being led, and driven, 
through a history in which should be set and 
dramatized spiritual things of which they were 
hopelessly ignorant. With them, as with no 
other people, therefore, the idea of God and 
the hope of Messiah could be preserved unto 
the time of its fulfillment. With them, as 
with no other people, could be enacted those 
revolutions in the nations sunk in the most 
hopeless idolatry — revolutions which were the 
necessary preparation for Christianity. By 
them, as by no other people, the materials 
could be furnished, and the Holy Word be 
written, and preserved in the form in which 



148 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION'. 

we now have it, as the form best adapted to 
render permanent the blessings of Divine reve- 
lation, to make them the most extensive, and 
to secure them from perversion. 

Their history is to be read, therefore, and 
their wars of extermination considered in the 
light of this representative character of their 
dispensation. As wars they were no more and 
no less lovely than certain modern ones to 
which we ascribe justice, and out of which 
have certainly grown beneficient results. War 
is never heavenly ; but if vice ever reached 
its limit and needed to be overthrown by the 
tearing down of its strongholds, then most 
justly was punishment inflicted on the Can- 
aanites. If a race ever destroys its capacity 
to benefit mankind, or to save its posterity 
from the darkness of its own evils, surely the 
nations of Canaan had reached that limit 
when their extirpation became a mercy. The 
extirpation of the wicked when their wicked- 
ness has reached its summit, is a measure of 
merciful necessity. In the providence of 
God the land of Canaan, the traditional seat 
of the ancient churches, was to become the 
theatre of representative rites and of a Divine 
Incarnation, from which should spring a new 
religious life on earth. The nations that over- 



PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 140 

ran the land had acted their part, and run 
the length of license, and come to the limit 
of permission. They were to be, and they 
were, displaced by a people who, though rebel- 
lious, could yet be led into and kept in holy 
externals., They were fit instruments, as a 
holy and righteous people could not have been, 
even if the Lord had found any such, for the 
accomplishment of that which needed to be 
done in the economy of His providence, which 
looked to all that has grown out of it, and the 
still greater blessings that are yet to grow out 
of it in the brightening eras of a spiritual 
Christianity. As matter of human history, 
therefore, the displacement of the Canaani- 
tish nations by the Children of Israel, is to be 
regarded as the displacement of one evil by a 
less, with a view to a providential purpose of 
good to humanity. It was equally a mercy 
to the Canaanites and to the world, if it is 
ever a mercy to cut off a hopelessly tainted 
generation. 

(b.) Let us now consider the record of 
these wars as a part of the written Word of 
God. In common with all the Israelitish his- 
tory, it is representative and typical of spirit- 
ual things, the affairs of that people having 
been constantly overruled for this purpose. It 



150 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 

is, as I have said, a grand drama. The first 
scene commences with the calling; of Abra- 
ham, and the last concludes with the destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem by the Romans. All their 
patriarchs and kings, priests and prophets, 
and indeed the whole people, were the actors 
in this wonderful drama. The characters 
represented were the Lord Jesus Christ, as to 
all that He performed and suffered in His con- 
flicts with our spiritual enemies for the re- 
demption of mankind ; His Church in the 
steps of her progress from carnal to celestial ; 
and the individual member of the Church in 
all the stages of his corresponding advance- 
ment. Everything which creates opposition 
is also shown — the obstacles to be overcome 
and the lapses to be dreaded, as well as the 
blessings to be obtained. 

Some of you may not know that this is 
true, because it has not been shown you. But 
consider if it were desirable whether the Chil- 
dren of Israel w T ere not just such a people as 
would be capable of enacting such a represen- 
tative history. Consider, if it were enacted 
and desirable to be preserved, whether the 
record of their history as found in the sacred 
scriptures is not such as would be most scrup- 
ulously guarded and handed down by them. 



PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION 151 

Consider whether its accommodations to their 
idea of God as being One and Almighty, but 
yet such a One as themselves ; its interpola- 
ted myths appealing to their wonder; its his- 
torical exaggerations appealing to their vani- 
ty, were not all necessary to their reception of 
it, and likely to insure its preservation. And 
when I tell you that these peculiarities of the 
letter of the sacred record, which are so often 
urged as an objection to its inspiration, were 
not only necessary to its reception and preser- 
vation, but were needed also to perfect the 
series of truths which constitute its internal 
spiritual sense, I only say what is verified and 
is provable. For these sacred histories are 
representative not only in a general way, but 
specifically as to the actors, in their successes 
and reverses, as to all the scenes, and every 
particular. 

This is strange onlv because it has not been 
known. Devout discipleship has always seen 
something of the general representation. It 
has been known that Canaan represents the 
Church and Heaven ; that Israel represents 
the spiritual Israelite, who is without guile 
before God ; and that their enemies typify 
the besetting evils of the heart and obstruc- 
tions to the Christian life. But it is now to 



152 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 

be known that this is not only true in a figur- 
ative sense and general way, but exactly as to 
every particular recorded, even those which 
are historically trivial and unaccountable. 
This needs to be known, and is therefore re- 
vealed in one day, for two reasons : First, to 
restore confidence in the Inspiration of Scrip- 
ture, and to lead on to an affirmative and ex- 
pectant study of it. The searching analysis 
of modern criticism has brought to light so 
much in the mere letter to be complained of 
and caviled at, that it has determined the 
thought of the Church away from the "spir- 
it " which " giveth life, " and left us the dead 
letter of a peculiar history, which is regarded 
as .holy only from its antiquity. Nothing but 
an equally critical exposition of the spiritual 
meanings involved in each and every particu- 
lar case can again restore it to reverence, and 
open its divine uses. Then, second, this needs 
to be known, because it is not a mere techni- 
cal issue of the Inspiration of Scripture, but 
a matter of practical import in the illustra- 
tion of Christian life. 'The Hebrew Scrip- 
tures have not fulfilled their use, and ceased 
to be the Word of God. The day is coming 
when the spiritual sense of all this history 
and symbol will be unfolded to your wonder, 






PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 153 

and you shall see in them the gospel, such as 
it has not entered into your heart to conceive 
of it. And those who have looked upon the 
dawn of the coming day, testify truly that 
these Scriptures are no more to them a record 
of bloody wars, and unchaste lives, and cruel 
persecutions, man with man, but a prophecy 
of self-conquest, a particular portrayal of the 
evils to be encountered, and the means by 
which they are to be subdued and the king- 
dom of God established. 

And how much we need this instruction ! 
It would save us many a sad disappointment, 
and fortifv us for strength where we often dis- 
play vacillation and weakness. Multitudes 
are received into the Church every year, un- 
der the delusion that the indeterminate thing 
called "conversion" is all and enough. Af- 
ter a hearty and painful effort to rouse them- 
selves from worldliness and indifference, 
they are allowed to fancy all the promises of 
"a new heart," and a pure one, fulfilled; and 
that in entering into the communion of the 
Church they are entering into a land " flow- 
ing with milk and honey," wherein is rest, 
peace and happiness. But they soon learn 
better; and the disenchantment is often at- 
tended with remorse and despair. How many 



154 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 

sad mistakes might have been saved you if 
your new love and purpose and hope had 
been warned of the " seven nations mightier 
and stronger" than themselves, already in- 
trenched in the fastness of the heart, ready to 
contest every advance in the establishment of 
heavenly principles. When the Israelites 
arrived at the promised land, they found that 
their real warfare had just begun. And for 
what weary years, and with what ever-shift- 
in vicissitudes it was carried on ! Sometimes 
they were victorious ; sometimes defeated — 
once having even the sacred ark itself cap- 
tured from them by their pagan enemies. In 
all this is only an image of man's conflict 
with "the foes of his own household," the 
wicked native occupants of his heart, hid he- 
reditary and acquired evils which he cannot 
run away from, but must combat and over- 
come. It would do us infinite good in our 
struggles to know that the Lord goes before us 
to cast out these native evil and false princi- 
ples, not all at once, lest the land become des- 
olate, but little by little, as spiritual principles 
increase and multiply and become fixed. 

If this principle were clearly understood, it 
would save much of what is known as " back- 
sliding," — the indifference that follows disap- 



PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 155 

pointment. Regeneration is not accomplished 
by a sudden and irresistible stroke of God's 
power, but by little and little, as evils are sub- 
dued and good principles established in obe- 
dience to the Lord, who is " the Captain of our 
Salvation." When we have put down pride, 
jealousy is at hand ; and when we have over- 
come selfishness in one form, it comes in 
another form in the suggestion of spiritual 
pride that we are getting to be somebody. No 
sooner was a battle won than the Israelites 
forgot God and fell a prey to another foe; illus- 
trating the subtle encroachments of our selfish 
pride, which plunges us into conceit at every 
successful resistance of evil, and thus leaves us 
unprotected from a still more persistent enemy 
Our Christianity has been such an external 
and formal thing for the most part, that very 
few seem to realize that it involves interior 
purification. If men have been faithful to the 
laws of the institutional church, observing its 
formalities with decorum, and stoutly calling 
on the name of Christ, that is thought to be a 
real life and preparation for heaven. It is 
not so, however. Good it may be, but not 
enough. Outward piety without internal re- 
pentance is at least only a truce with our 
spiritual foes. 



15G PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION'. 

Our regeneration is effected by the implan- 
tation of spiritual good and truth, and then 
by the removal of what is evil and false. But 
we have the faintest possible conception of the 
process; of the complications of evil and its 
entrenchment behind the fallacies and sophis- 
tries of our artificial lives. " By little and 
little " are they expelled, only as the fruitful- 
ness of a true culture shall abound in the 
spirit. The heart knowethnot its own secret; 
the understanding doth not consider. It may 
well be that our defeats are of Providence as 
much as our victories are ; not only following 
necessarily when we turn away to other gods, 
but revealing thereby new foes to be encount- 
ered and new truths to be heeded. We can- 
not wish ourselves into the kingdom of heaven ; 
we cannot pray ourselves there. We must 
remember the Lord our God and keep his 
commandments, and loyally fight on against 
whatsoever opposes them. With " the sword 
of the spirit" and " the shield of faith, " we 
must make the best fight we can, rallying from 
every defeat, and glorifying God in every suc- 
cess, "faithful unto death." 

God hath given us this record of war, with 
its successes and reverses, that we may read 
in it our own evils and the means of subdu- 



PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 157 

ing them,the causes and the issues of conflict, 
and through all our dependence upon Him 
and the ark of His covenant. Shall we re- 
nounce it all because the blind learning of 
our day, seeking no Divine message in it, has 
been able to read no Divine wisdom out of it? 
Nay ; rather let us approach it as the good 
gift of God, ready to learn and do what things 
He has therein to teach us profitable for sal- 
vation. It is not history or science that we 
need a Bible to teach us, but the mysteries of 
spiritual life, the sins that so easily beset us, 
and the weapons of defense and final exter- 
mination. And this we shall find whenso- 
ever we seek it in the Holy Word if we are 
teachable and humble, looking up to the spir- 
it and not down to the letter. And in the 
days that are opening upon the Church, bless- 
ed shall they be who are found waiting and 
watching for the coming of the light of life ; 
for they shall behold it breaking forth in its 
revealing splendors out of the darkest clouds 
of the letter, giving a new meaning to human 
life, a new breadth to the Divine command- 
ments, and a new blessedness to the promise, 
" To him that overcometh will I give to sit 
with Me in My throne, even as I also over- 
came and am set down with My Father in 
His throne. " 



VI. 

THE BOOTRIKE OF THE SPIRIT- 
UAL SE^SE THE ONLY AN- 
SWER TO SKEPTICAL 
OBJECTIONS. 

Heaven and earth shall pass away; but my words shall not pass away. 
—Luke xxi : 33. 

Men's thoughts change, God's endure. Hu- 
man imaginations serve their use and pass 
away ; but the eternal realities of Divine 
Truth remain. "We begin with fallacies al- 
ways. We see at the first only the appear- 
ance. Though a truth be hidden in the falla- 
cy, though a reality be presented in the ap- 
pearance, we see it only as we are able; and 
all our growth in wisdom and life consists in 
penetrating appearances and rising out 
of fallacies into more rational conceptions 
of the indwelling Spirit of truth. Truth may 
be divested of its garments, and ma}' be seen 
more and more clearly as to its real quality, 

(158) 



SPIRITUAL SENSE. 159 

but it never is outgrown, never ceases to pre- 
sent new fields of inquiry, and new answers to 
newly awakened questions. Our opinions and 
beliefs, founded on our imperfect and fallacious 
interpetations of the Lord's words, change as 
our states change, and pass away, but the truth 
does not pass away, and this familiar fact is a 
comfortable rock upon which to rest our faith 
in the sufficiency of the Bible to meet the need 
and guide the thought of this skeptical and 
speculative time. 

Never were so great changes at work in the 
" heaven and earth " of human minds ; never 
were opinions so generally unsettled ; never 
were dogmas so little respected and so easily 
relinquished ; never was investigation so free 
and independent, ignoring past conclusions 
based on discarded appearances, and reaching 
out after facts. There is an old argument for 
the Bible based upon its age and its influence, 
namely : — These Holy Scriptures have stood 
the test of time. They have been the foun- 
tain of life, light, inspiration and hope, to 
thousands on earth, whom we trust and be- 
lieve are now enjoying the felicities of life 
eternal. They have revealed the Master, and 
imparted noble motives to the master-minds 
of the civilized world. All this is good and 



160 SPIRITUAL SENSE. 

strong presumptive evidence of their Divine 
origin. But there has come a state of mind 
in society, to which this argument is inade- 
quate. No merely external evidence of the 
Divine character of the Scriptures is sufficient 
to commend them to the love and faith of that 
lar^e class of thoroughly honest men and 
women to whom modern criticism has ap- 
pealed. The Bible is losing its hold upon so 
many sincere minds, because it has been per- 
verted by a vast amount of absurd interpreta- 
tion, which men have not learned to separate 
from the Revelation itself. Historical criti- 
cism, useful as it may be in discovering what is 
false in human interpretation, fails, for want 
of a true doctrine of Divine Inspiration, to dis- 
cern the universal and eternal Word of the 
Lord in Sacred Scripture. Its present ten- 
dency is to sweep away all Divine authority, 
together with the traditions of men. "Lest, 
therefore, mankind should be in doubt con- 
cerning the Divinity and sanctity of the 
Word, its internal sense has been revealed, 
which in its essence is spiritual, and is in the 
external sense as the soul is in the body. That 
sense is the soul which vivifies the letter ; 
wherefore that sense can testify concerning 
the Divine sanctity of the Word, and convince 



SPIRITUAL SENSE: 161 

even the natural man if he is willing to be 
convinced." 

I wish to give you some final reasons for 
this faith, and shall endeavour to show (a) 
the great present need in the Churches of the 
doctrine of the internal sense ; and (b) that it is 
the only answer to skeptical objections. 

1. The new doctrine of the Internal Sense 
of Holy Scripture is needed in the Churches, 
because apart from it there is no practical 
faith in the Bible as the Word of God. A 
practical faith is a working faith. It must be, 
as far as it goes, rational, assured, settled, con- 
fident. It must be seen to inhere in the nature 
of things; must be so justified and confirmed 
as to become a principle of belief and conduct. 
There is no such faith in the plenary Inspira- 
tion of the Scriptures apart from the doctrine 
of their internal sense. It is impossible that a 
belief in their plenary Inspiration can co-exist 
with a belief that they contain but one sense, 
and that the literal sense. It might have 
been possible once, when men believed what 
they were taught without questioning the mat- 
ter of belief or the authority of the teacher ; 
but it is not possible in this day of intellectual 
activity, when teachers debate and men weigh 

evidence. This is shown not alone in the pres- 
11 



162 SPIRITUAL SENSE. 

ent confusion of opinion and timid, apologetic 
defense of Revelation ; but also in the history 
of the decline of the doctrine of Inspiration. 

It is true that all Christian Churches agree 
in confessing the Bible as the Word of God, 
but upon no subject is there greater diversity 
of opinion than upon the character and extent 
of its Inspiration. " The consequence of the 
study and application of the Bible, from the 
period of the Reformation (says an orthodox 
authority), has been gradually and progres- 
sively to limit the extent of Inspiration ; and 
by so doing to vindicate (as was supposed) the 
Holy Character of what is unquestionably of 
Divine origin, and to make the application of 
the rule of faith more sure." The belief in the 
Spiritual sense of Scripture, which was cur- 
rent in the primitive Church and prevailed 
more or less extensively for fourteen centuries, 
had suffered much discredit on account of fanci- 
ful and absurd interpretations. Without any 
rational doctrine of the inhabitation of the 
Spiritual sense in the literal, and with no rule 
of interpellation, the temptation to read human 
fancies into the text led toappallingcorruptions 
of doctrine. The reaction, of course, was to 
insist upon the authority of the literal sense 
of Scripture as its final sense ; but the doctrine 



SPIRITUAL SENSE. 163 

of plenary Inspiration was still retained, in 
name at least. There had been a belief in "an 
entire inspiration of matter, words and com- 
position generally;" but "at the period of the 
Reformation, Luther placed the first limit on 
this view, and contended that the matter only 
was of Divine origin, the composition human." 
With the gradual progress of inquiry and the 
more diligent use of the Scriptures a further 
limitation was put upon their inspiration, and 
so much of the matter of the Bible as conflicted 
with the developing facts of natural science, 
was excluded. Then, with one portion of the 
matter of the Bible excluded from the sphere 
of Revelation, it was contended that state- 
ments of fact which belonged not to Sacred but 
to profane history, should be excluded on sim- 
ilar grounds. Next was raised the question 
whether even its Sacred history is inspired ; 
and that question was answered in the nega- 
tive with regard to all except such portions of 
the historical record as involve a matter of 
faith or practice. And proceeding on this 
principle, as orthodox criticism has done, 
namely, that the Bible is to be maintained as 
" the rule of faith," and dogmatic truth the 
only matter needing the control of Inspiration, 
the reasoning of the inspired writers was next 



164 SPIRITVAL SENSE. 

held to belong to themselves and not to the 
Spirit. Hence, " the assertions, and not the 
proofs, are the proper objects of unqualified 
assent." 

This gradual limitation of the extent of In- 
spiration has proceeded upon the theory, it 
must be remembered, that the Bible contains 
but one sense, and that the sense of the letter ; 
the " meaning which it had to the prophet or 
evangelist who first uttered or wrote, to the 
hearers or readers who first received it." Be- 
hold, then, what a remarkable basis of faith 
in Inspiration is left for the devout acceptance 
of men! After you have excluded all possi- 
ble mystical meaning in any part of Scripture, 
and confined its Inspiration to the plain gram- 
matical sense of the letter ; after you have ex- 
cluded all that is peculiar in its composition; all 
allusions to natural facts; all matter of profane 
history ; all religious history that is not abso- 
lutely necessary to establish some dogma of 
faith; all parables, illustrations and reason- 
ings; everything but the exact, direct and 
unequivocal assertion of matter of belief; — 
that which is left over is not much. 

It would be wrong to present this as a 
statement of the accepted doctrine of Inspira- 
tion. It is doubtful if the Latitudinarian 



SPIRITUAL SENSE. 165 

School, which as we read the signs, is begin- 
ning to prevail even in Orthodox Churches, 
would accept the consequences of such a state- 
ment. But it is seriously presented, notwith- 
standing, as the logical conclusion required 
by their frequent assertions and concessions, 
however much their reverent feelings may 
revolt against such an intellectual conclusion. 
It is probable that most religious teachers 
hope to maintain a truce between faith and 
reason, and retain a real belief in the Divine 
Origin and Inspiration of the Scriptures, while 
allowing the admissions which the results of 
criticism seem to require ; but it is a self-decep- 
tion that cannot last. "So long as it was be- 
lie ved," says a much respected authority, " that 
each word and phrase to be found in the Bi- 
ble — nay, even the order and grammatical 
connection of such words and phrases — had 
been infused by the Holy Ghost into the 
minds of the Sacred writers, or dictated to 
them by His immediate suggestion, so long 
must the opinion held respecting Inspiration 
have been clear, intelligible, and accurately 
defined. But such a theory could not stand 
the test of close examination. The strongest 
evidence against it has been supplied by 
the Bible itself ; and each additional discovery 



166 SPIRITUAL SENSE. 

in the criticism of the Greek and Hebrew text 
confirms anew the conclusion that the great 
doctrine of the infallibility of Holy Scripture 
can no longer rely upon such a principle for 
its defense. The ' mechanicah' theory (he con- 
tinues) having been tacitly abandoned — at 
least by all who are capable of appreciating 
the results of criticism — and no systen alto- 
gether satisfactory having been proposed in its 
stead, there has gradually sprung up a want 
of definiteness and an absence of consistency 
in the language used when speaking of In- 
spiration, owing to which those who are most 
sincere in maintaining the Divine Character of 
the Bible, have not infrequently been betrayed 
into concessions fatal to its supreme authority." 
{Lee on Inspiration, Preface.) This writer in 
presenting the characteristic of "the great 
majority of modern theories of Inspiration/' 
"that of ascribing undue prominence to the 
human element of the Bible/' reduces the vari- 
eties of opinion which may be traced to this 
source to the following : 

" I. To the first head may be referred those 
writers who have changed the formula '.The 
Bible is the Word of God/ into ' The Bible 
contains the Word of God.' Writers of this 
class, while they generally shrink from abso- 



SPIRITUAL SENSE. 167 

lately drawing: the line between what is and 
what is not inspired, yet broadly ' assert as well 
the possibility as the existence of imperfections 
in Scripture, whether resulting from limited 
knowledge, or inadvertance, or defective 
memory on the part of its authors." 

" II. Under the second head, may be placed 
the different hypotheses which assume various 
degrees of Inspiration. The tendency of all 
such hypotheses/' "is to fine down to the min- 
utest point, if not altogether to deny, the agen- 
cy of the ' Holy Spirit in certain portions of 

the Bible Where nature ended, and 

Inspiration began, it is not for man to say." 

"III. The third head comprises Schleier- 
macher and his followers ; the shibboleth of 
whose school, in brief, is this: 'The letter kill- 
eth, the spirit giveth life.' The idea of Rev- 
elation, according to Schleiermacher, is con- 
fined to the person of Christ : the notion of In- 
spiration he considers to be one of completely 
subordinate importance in Christianity ; the 
sole power which the Bible possesses of convey- 
ing a Revelation to us consisting in its aiding in 
the awakening and elevation of our religious 
conciousness ; in its presenting to us a mirror 
of the history of Christ ; in its respecting the 
intense religious life of His followers ; and in 



168 SPIRITUAL SENSE. 

giving us the letter through which the Spirit 
of Truth may be brought home in vital expe- 
rience to the human heart.'" (Id. p. 34.) 

Rejecting the doctrine of " mechanical " 
Inspiration, and these theories which arise 
from giving undue prominence to the " human 
element " of the Bible, this author proposes a 
theory of Inspiration by which he wishes to 
retain the truth in each of the several systems 
without their weaknesses and errors. He 
makes a distinction between Revelation and 
Inspiration. By Revelation he understands 
" a direct communication to man, either of 
such knowledge as man could not of himself 
attain to, because its subject-matter transcends 
human sagacity/' " or which was not in point 
of fact, from whatever cause, known to the 
person who received the Revelation." By In- 
spiration he understands " that actuating en- 
ergy of the Holy Spirit, in whatever degree or 
manner it may have been exercised, guided by 
which the human agents chosen by God have 
officially proclaimed His will." Upon this 
theory some portions of the Scriptures cannot 
be said to contain a Divine Revelation ; but 
they are all the result of Divine Inspiration. 
This Inspiration "employs man's faculties in 
accordance with their natural laws; at the 



SPIRITUAL SENSE. 169 

same time animating, guiding, moulding them 
so as to accomplish the Divine purpose." 
" We must not regard the Sacred penmen, on 
the one hand, as passive machines, yielding to 
an external mechanical -force;" "on the other 
hand, if we dwell solely upon the subjective 
phase of this influence, we lose sight of the 
living connection of the writers with God." 
In a word, the writers were themselves in the 
full possession of their faculties, and their own 
knowledge of history and precept ; but they 
were so guided and controlled by Inspiration, 
and their knowledge so far supplemented by 
supernatural Revelation, that the result, 
while partaking of the peculiarity of genius, 
thought and feeling of the writer, is never- 
theless Divine and authoritative (pp. 140,42). 
This theory of Inspiration may be accepted, 
we suppose, as substantially representing the 
position of the most thoughtful .among Ortho- 
dox teachers in the Churches. It contains 
many elements of truth, and so far as it goes, 
it is capable of being harmonized with the 
doctrine of an indwelling spiritual sense in all 
Scripture. But standing alone, and predicated 
of the mere literal sense of Scripture, it is ut- 
terly indefensible. It fails to account for dis- 
crepancies in facts and statements, for the want 



170 SPIRITUAL SENSE, 

of chronological accuracy, for the unnatural 
arrangement and confusion in the order of the 
narrative, which are acknowledged on all 
hands to exist in the Old Testament history. 
It does not account for the different versions 
of the same facts, nor for the seeming contra- 
diction, both in the relation of the same facts, 
and in the relation of other facts which ap- 
pear to exclude each other, in the Gospels. 
If the letter of the Bible is exclusively the 
Word of God, containing no distinct spiritual 
sense to account for these apparent difficulties, 
they cannot be reconciled with any theory of 
Inspiration which claims the Bible as a Di- 
vine and authoritative record. " To suppose 
a supernatural influence to cause the record of 
that which can only issue in a puzzle, is to 
lower infinitely our conceptions of the Divine 
dealings in respect to a special revelation/' 

In estimating the need of a new doctrine of 
the Sacred Scriptures in the Churches, there- 
fore, we must consider, not alone what is put 
forth as the theory of Inspiration, but also the 
admissions and difficulties which, on the other 
hand, render the doctrine as held indefensible. 
It will be found (a) that among a majority of 
the teachers in the Churches, the impression 
pre vails, not that the Bible is the Word of 



SPIRITUAL SENSE. 171 

God, but that it contains the Word of God ; 
and that means, not that it contains an inter- 
nal sense by virtue of which it is Holy and 
Divine, but that some things in it are true, and 
some are not. Where the line is to be drawn, 
what is to be accepted and what rejected, it is 
not easy to determine, in the absence of any 
better guide than the individual judgment. It 
is manifest that such an uncertain faith in Di- 
vine Revelation cannot hold its own poor 
footing against the advance of a destructive 
criticism. 

It will be found (b) that there are teachers 
in the Churches who contend that the Sacred 
writers were so guided and controlled by In- 
spiration as to have produced a record which, 
with all its human elements, is still the Divine 
and authoritative Word o£ God. But inas- 
much as these hold the literal sense to be the 
final sense of Scripture, they are left with no 
defense against the destructive exhibit of his- 
torical criticism, save their own naked asser- 
tion. It will be found (c) that these diffi- 
culties are becoming more clearly appreciated, 
both by the Orthodox and liberal teachers in 
the Churches. The Rev. Moses 'Smith voices 
the feeling of a large number of sincere and 
able ministers when he writes, u Wanted : 



172 SPIRITUAL SENSE. 

A new statement of the doctrine of the Inspi- 
ration of the Bible." "'Modern scholarship," 
he says, " has made large advances in restor- 
ing the original Scripture text; scientific 
discoveries have notably improved Biblical 
interpretation. Some modification of state- 
ment in regard to Inspiration would naturally 
be expected. Such modification has become 
imnerative. The old forms of statement, in 
the face of modern criticism, are like stone 
forts and wooden frigates in the face of mod- 
ern ordinance and iron-clads." 

The defect thus confessed is not alone in the 
inadequate statement, however, but in the fal- 
lacious conception of the Divine character of 
the Scriptures. What is needed is a doctrine 
able to maintain itself, and capable, therefore, 
of supporting a rational, assured, settled, con- 
fident faith. This characteristic the new doc- 
trine of the Internal Sense presents. It is not 
disturbed by any conflict between the cos- 
mogany of the Pentateuch and science, nor by 
historical inaccuracies, nor by literal contra- 
dictions even, since it declares the purpose of 
Scripture is to teach neither science, nor histo- 
ry, nor formulated dogma, but spiritual prin- 
ciples, It is not affected by the obscurities of 
the letter, for it possesses a rule of interpreta- 



SPIRITUAL SENSE.- 173 

tion by which to resolve the apparent confu- 
sion of the literal symbols and representatives 
into the light and harmony of spiritual truth. 
It makes little difference to a faith resting 
upon this doctrine, whether the Pentateuch 
were written by Moses or copied from older 
documents ; little difference whether it be 
myth or fact that is recorded. For it accepts 
as the primary aim of the Word the revela- 
tion of spiritual truth; and for this purpose a 
myth may in some instances be more service- 
able than a fact ; a fragmentary history more 
useful than exact Chronicle. What this doc- 
trine requires is, that in every instance, wheth- 
er myth or fact, the record shall contain a 
distinct spiritual meaning corresponding ivith 
the sense of the letter ; and the presence of 
such a meaning alone constitutes its full or 
" plenary " Inspiration. The peculiarities in 
the record which are brought to light in the 
progress of science or criticism, will be wel- 
comed in the light of this doctrine as so many 
instances of the supremacy of the Spiritual 
Sense ; and if the doctrine be true it will be 
able to show that these peculiarities of the 
letter only minister to the sequence and per- 
fection of the spiritual meaning. Such a 
doctrine the Churches need; and nothing but 



174 SPIRITUAL SENSE. 

its acceptance can save them from practical re- 
jection of the Word of God. 

I do not forget that the Bible is able to 
commend itself to simple faith ; that it has 
met, and does now meet, the spiritual wants 
of many sincere Christian people who have 
never been disturbed by the clamors of criti- 
cism, and who have never attempted to define 
the doctrine of Inspiration. They know that 
they have always been accustomed to regard 
the Bible as God's Word, and beyond this 
they only know that they find in it when they 
seek the Bread of Life. But these simple- 
minded Christians do really and most practi- 
cally believe in the Spiritual sense of the Bible ; 
and it is this which makes itself felt through 
their unshaken faith, and gives them wisdom 
above their teachers. Once destrov that faith, 
by persistent and confusing objections, and 
thenceforth " one suggestion of doubt will have 
more weight than a thousand confirmations." 
It is precisely this which is being done. Peo- 
ple are taught to think of the letter alone, and 
they hear this attacked on every side by the 
most specious objections. They observe that 
most of what is written by their orthodox and 
trusted teachers is directed to the defense of the 
authenticity of the Sacred books, or to the 



PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 175 

reconciliation of Genesis and Geology, or the 
harmonizing of historical discrepancies ; they 
observe the accumulating strength of skeptical 
objections, and the demoralization of their own 
forces, and losing thus the reverence of tradi- 
tion, and finding no rational basis of faith, they 
are without the Spiritual qualifications for per- 
ceiving the Divine Spirit and life that flow in 
through the Word. The man who has grown 
up with a sincere and humble reverence for 
God's message to him in His Holy Book, and 
has actually tested its commands in his life's 
experience, knows that it is Divine by the sur- 
est of all testimony : " Whereas I was blind, 
now I see." But such is not the condition of 
the rising generation, nor of any great number 
of professing Christians; they have passed from 
the state of traditional faith into a skepticism, 
out of which there is no way but through 
rational evidence and intellectual conviction. 
They must be taught rationally to see that 
there is an internal Spiritual sense everywhere 
present in Holy Scripture, by virtue of which 
it is Divine, and then they may if they will, 
reverence it as God's Word, and compelling 
themselves to obey it as such, confirm their 
rational faith in Spiritual experience. 

II. We have now to consider the doctrine 



176 SPIRITUAL SENSE. 

of the Internal Sense in its relation to skepti- 
cal objections. The first general answer which 
this doctrine presents to all skeptical objections 
founded upon the appearances of the letter of 
Holy Scripture is this : " Admitting all the 
difficulties which you have brought forward, 
the fair inference from such appearances is, 
not that the Scriptures are uninspired, but that 
if they are, they must contain that superior wis- 
dom which is the criterion of Inspiration, in an 
interiorsensedistinctfrom the literal expression- 
We find in the Scriptures numerous intimations 
leading us to look for something beyond the 
letter; the difficulties you have raised are cal- 
culated to turn our attention in the same direc- 
tion; you have produced nothing that can con- 
vince a reflecting mind that the Scriptures are 
not the Word of God ; you only compel us to 
correct our conceptions, and take higher views 
as to what the Word of God must really be; 
your objections hold mainly against your 
first assumed canon of interpretation, namely : 
that the Scriptures contain but one sense and 
that the literal sense ; they judge your own 
position, and sustain the first conclusion of 
reason that a Revelation which is really from 
God, must contain the mind of God — not upon 
its face but within its bosom." 



SPIRITUAL SENSE. 177 

This answer does not indeed prove that the 
Scriptures are the Word of God, but it indi- 
cates the proper attitude of the inquirer, and 
establishes a ruling principle of criticism, 
which the objections drawn from the letter of 
Scripture in no way invalidate, but rather 
strengthen. This principle is, that the evi- 
dences of Divine Inspiration, and the final and 
harmonizing sense of Scripture, is to be sought 
for within, and not without. If the matter to 
be revealed is the Divine and Infinite wisdom, 
and God has nothing else to reveal; if those to 
whom it is to be adapted and revealed are im- 
mersed in evils and fallacies ; it follows as a 
necessary conclusion that the real matter of 
Revelation must be involved' in earthly sym- 
bols and representatives, and that it is to be 
sought within the symbols and representatives 
and not confounded with them. Strong pre- 
sumptive evidence in favor of this position is 
furnished in the facts, (a), that the Scriptures 
repeatedly make this claim for themselves ; (b) 
that it was accepted and made the basis of 
interpretation in the Primitive Church; (c) 
that it has been tacitly accepted and practically 
followed by all earnest Christians who have 
realized the highest experiences of Spiritual 

life, and (d), that the symbols and representa- 
12 



K8 SPIRITUAL SENSE. 

tives of the letter, as examined and compared 
in the light of modern criticism, cannot bo 
understood as presenting the genuine Divine 
truth upon their face, and must be regarded as 
its clothing and representative mirror, or as 
unworthy of reverence. 

In the face of all this it ought not to seem 
impossible nor improbable that there is a Di- 
vine Law governing the inhabitation of Spirit- 
ual wisdom in the letter of Scripture, and that 
that law should be revealed in the Church and 
become a universal rule of interpretation. 
These considerations should, at least, create in 
the earnest truth-seeker, an affirmative attitude 
of mind, toward the doctrine of an internal 
sense, and that established, the rest is a matter 
of fact. It is incumbent upon the doctrine of 
the internal sense to demonstrate its fitness, and 
upon its doctrine of Correspondence to show 
its reality by its ability to unlock the symbols 
of the letter, and explain the peculiarities of 
the literal record. This we claim it will do 
for the inquirer who approaches in an affirma- 
tive state of mind. But he must guard against 
prejudice as an end of inquiry. He must ad- 
mit the possibility provisionally or he cannot 
proceed. I have done what I could in former 
lectures to throw light upon the general sub- 



SPIRITUAL SENSE. 179 

ject in such a way as to create this affirmative 
attitude of inquiry. Whoever is ready for 
proofs, and willing to see them if they are 
valid, may find them in Swedenborg's Arcana 
Cwlestia, or in the expository works of the 
New Church, where the actual working power 
of the doctrine of Correspondence, as a rule of 
interpretation, is presented. For my present 
purpose I must again assume these evidences 
perfect, that I may proceed to state in brief 
the answers of this doctrine to some of the 
particular objections of skepticism. 

(1) As to the Authenticity of the Canon. 
We are told that "the ablest critics agree only 
in the opinion that no safe opinion can be pro- 
nounced," "as to when, or by whom, or on 
what principle" the Jewish Canon was estab- 
lished, and that it is equally impossible to tell 
when or by whom the four Gospels were writ- 
ten. This difficulty is urged against the In- 
spiration and Divine authority of the Scriptures 
on the assumption that such authority is inad- 
missible unless you can authenticate an inspir- 
ed writer and "a perfect two-thousand-year- 
long chain of preservation and transmission" 
of the original writing. It is to be regretted 
that the defenders of the Bible should seem to 
admit this assumption in accepting the issue. 



180 SPIRITUAL SENSE. 

It is well enough for historical critics to bring 
to light what facts they are able in regard to 
the authenticity of the Sacrecl books, but it is a 
mistake to rest the question of Inspiration upon 
external evidences of authenticity ; (a) , Because 
external evidence in such matters is exceed- 
ingly uncertain, and may be easily used to 
confirm any hypothesis with which the inves- 
tigation is begun. The results of criticism 
show that this is the case, and that opposite 
schools can with great show of success press the 
uncertain data to the support of opposite conclu- 
sions, (i), Because it is not a primary question. 
Its settlement determines nothing with re- 
spect to the Divine character and Spiritual value 
of the document. If the authorship and pre- 
cise transmission could be perfectly authenti- 
cated by external evidence, the question of In- 
spiration would be just as far from being set- 
tled, and the characteristics of the writings 
just as difficult of explanation. Error uttered 
by an inspired writer is no more truth than 
the error of an uninspired one, and the primary 
question is not as to the human authorship, but 
as to the Divine content of the Scriptures. 
Our answer to all objections based upon the 
difficulty of authenticating by external evi- 
dence the authorship and purity of the Sacred 



SPIRITUAL SENSE. 181 

text is this : The Scriptures are Divine by 
virtue of a distinct Spiritual sense exactly with- 
in the letter ; the Science of Correspondence 
discloses such a sense, it is, therefore, the true 
test of Divine authenticity. I must remind 
you again, that this Science of Correspondence 
is a definite and teachable system; that it 
can be studied and applied, and the re- 
sults examined in the light of reason ; that it 
has been so studied and applied, and the result 
is an intelligible, serial and consistent Spiritual 
sense in verse after verse, and book after book, 
and that to those, who, from examination, are 
alone competent to judge, the rule of interpreta- 
tion and the Spiritual sense elicited verify each 
other. If, now, it should be demonstrable that 
Genesis yields upon the application of this 
science a serial and harmonious Spiritual sense 
in all respects worthy of a Divine Revelation, 
and the book of Proverbs does not ; then any 
reasonable man must conclude that the Divine 
content of Genesis is its authentication, even 
though there should be no evidence of any kind 
that it was written by Moses, or any one man 
at any one time, and though there should be 
the most unmistakable evidence, on the other 
hand, that the Proverbs were written by their 
reputed author. If the rule of interpretation 



182 SPIRITUAL SENSE. 

were a loose and imperfect key, unlocking 
some passages or even some chapters, and fail- 
ing in others, it could scarcely be accepted as 
the test of the Divine Canon. But such is not 
its character. It unlocks the intelligible secret 
of those books which bear upon their face the 
claim to be the Word of God. It applies with 
equally happy results to the Pentateuch and to 
the Four Gospels, to the Pslams and to the 
Prophets, showing in each and all a connected 
and harmonious internal sense. In the face of 
such internal evidence, the conjectures and 
debates of the critics from their uncertain his- 
torical data, is mere ingenious trifling, and 
the most sober and assured results of literary 
criticism possess only a secondary value. 

(2) As to the Mythical element in Sacred 
Scripture. We are told that much of the 
Scriptures which is historical in form is mythi- 
cal in fact, that the writings of the Hebrews, 
like the earliest writings of all nations, are 
mythical, and that, therefore, they are of hu- 
man origin and possess no more Divine au- 
thority than other writings. It is asked, "can 
a book like Genesis or Exodus, made up largely 
of legends, be of equal value as history with a 
later book which really is history." A very 
pertinent question, if you wish to obscure the 



SPIRITUAL SEJSTSE. 183 

whole subject by assuming that the main pur- 
pose of the Scriptures is to teach history, and 
their value to be tested by historical accuracy. 
This assumption, however, we deny. No critic, 
orthodox or heterodox, has ever presented any 
good reason for it. It certainly was not a doc- 
trine of Primitive Christianity; it certainly is 
not promotive of Spiritual thought or religious 
faith. There is much more wisdom and Spirit- 
uality in the position taken by a clergyman of 
the English Church recently, who, declaring 
his belief in the Inspiration of the Bible, says; 
"I believe the Spirit of God, not only moved 
by secret impulses the minds of the Sacred 
writers, but also overruled to a great extent the 
ipsissima verba of Holy writ. And nowhere 
do I feel (rightly or wrongly) the Divine In- 
spiration more strongly and pervadingly, than 
in the early record of Genesis; every sentence, 
as Augustine says, contains a mystery. And 
yet I do regard these records as myths, and I 
think that all the efforts made to reconcile their 
statements with history and with science are 
only so much industry thrown away." This 
is the true position, and a perfectly natural 
and consistent one if we start with the assump- 
tion of the real claim of the Scriptures that they 
are God-inspired and profitable for instruction 



184 SPIRITUAL SENSE. 

in righteousness. Then, manifestly, a myth 
may be more serviceable as a vehicle of Di- 
vine and Spiritual truth than the most dog- 
matical form of doctrine, or the most exact 
statement of historical fact. That we should 
find both a Divine and a human element in 
the Bible, and that the human element should 
be variable, in adaptation to the changing cast 
of thought of successive ages, is precisely 
what we should expect in a written Revela- 
tion. That the earliest written forms of 
Divine Revelation should receive a mythical 
expression, is in entire agreement with what 
we know of the genius of the ancients. Why 
then should we conclude that because a myth- 
ical element is found in the Bible, the Divine 
must be wanting? Such an assumption is 
wholly gratuitous and inconclusive, and is of 
a piece with the insane notion of "develop- 
ment," that would trace everything back to 
nothing. If any one chooses to believe that 
the ancient myths and legends had their ori- 
gin in ignorance and superstition, he is indeed 
entitled to his choice; but he should know 
that the facts presented by comparative my- 
thology require no such conclusion, and lend 
to it no color of truth, unless you deny before 
hand that there is a God, or, being one, that 



SPIRITUAL SENSE. 185 

He is unable to reveal Himself to man. What 
modern learning Las done is this: "It traces 
the widely-scattered families of our race to- 
day, through the mazes of Divine languages, 
myths and religions, to our common old 
Aryan homestead ;" and shows us, " looming 
forth from the mists of past ages, the great 
trunk of a primitive religion and an Ancient 
Word, of which all the various religions and 
sacred traditions of later times are but the nu- 
merous and fruitful branches." The attempt 
to construct this primitive religion out of 
natural elements alone, and to refer it to the 
so-called Solar and Lunar Deities, or the su- 
perstitious reverence for natural phenomena, 
explains nothing but the pre-conceptions of 
those who invent it. 

We believe that these myths, legends, tales 
of the gods, pictures of the qualities and attri- 
butes and operations of the one God in his 
dealings with men, had their origin not in 
darkness, but in light ; — in that spiritual wis- 
dom and open revelation enjoyed by the Most 
Ancient Church, when Nature was to them 
full of the Divine Spirit and life, which then, 
in orderly influx, was communicated from the 
Deitv without the need of a written Word. 
At first, creation was to them an open book of 



186 SPIRITUAL SENSE: 

symbols, a mirror of Divine and Spiritual 
things ; but when this faculty of intuitive per- 
ception began to decline, in consequence of 
their turning to sensuous things for their own 
sake instead of regarding them as the means 
of heavenly intelligence and use, whilst yet 
among the wisest a desire for the knowledge 
of heavenly things remained, then they per- 
petuated by instruction those things which 
had before been known by intuition. Thus 
originated mythical stories and allegorical 
histories, by which were expressed, by means 
of analogies taken from nature and human 
conduct, the spiritual truths which had at the 
first been intuitively perceived in their natural 
correspondences and representatives. They 
described spiritual and interior subjects in 
language borrowed from the appearances of 
nature, in allegory and myth, without danger 
of such forms of expression being misunder- 
stood as literal statement of ordinary fact. 
The earliest form of Divine Revelation as- 
sumed, therefore, a mythical expression, as a 
necessary adaptation to the genius of the peo- 
ple to whom it was given ; and the first eleven 
chapters of Genesis, copied from the ancient 
Word, are illustrations of the purely correspon- 
dential style of the primitive Revelation. 



SPIRITUAL SENSE. 187 

The various mythologies are but branches of 
this ancient trunk of Revelation ; they point 
with wonderful distinctness to their common 
pre-historic origin ; they bear in their bosoms, 
buried under many corruptions, the Divine 
wisdom which is veiled in the natural symbol- 
ism and allegory of our written Bible; and the 
Science of Correspondence which opens to our 
wondering vision a complete and serial spirit- 
ual sense within the latter, furnishes also a 
key to the lost meaning and uniform origin of 
all sacred myths. When, therefore, it is ob- 
jected, that much which purports to be a his- 
tory of God's dealings with men, and of the 
order and time of creation, possesses neither 
historical nor scientific value — is in fact mere 
fable and myth, without any Divine Author- 
ity — -we admit the fact, and deny the conclu- 
sion. And while modern criticism can only 
substantiate the fact, the doctrine of the Inter- 
nal Sense gives a reason for the fact and veri- 
fies its reason by the exhibit of an intelligible 
Spiritual Sense in each and every fabulous 
history and so-called mythical interpolation, 
in its place. We may class also under this 
head all of those objections which are founded 
upon such peculiarities of the text as, (a) the 
want of chronological accuracy, (b) historical 



188 SPIRITUAL SENSE. 

discrepancies, (c) the recurrence of round 
numbers, such as are popularly supposed to 
possess a mystical meaning, (d) repetitions of 
the same fact or narrative under different con- 
ditions, or in relation to different persons, (e) 
an unnatural arrangement and dislocation of 
the narrative in many places, and (/) the 
existence of poetical and mystical forms of 
speech. These peculiarities, so troublesome to 
the critic who bases his investigations upon 
the assumption that the literal sense is the only 
sense, are seen from the standpoint of the in- 
ternal sense to furnish no ground of objection 
to the Divine Inspiration of the Scriptures, 
but on the contrary, are actually required to 
contain and express that sense. 

(3) As to the apparent sanction of im- 
mortality. The answer to this whole class of 
objection, was really furnished in the discourse 
on the Principle of Adaptation ; that Divine 
truth, in order to make itself apprehensible in 
any form to such a people as the Jews, and com- 
pel their obedience to any laws of Divine order, 
must necessarily be expressed in accommoda- 
tion to their carnal state and fallacious notions. 
Every Revelation is and must be an accom- 
modation of the matter so revealed to the states 
and capacities of those to whom it has come. It 



SPIRITUAL SENSE. 189 

must therefore of necessity indicate two things : 
the mode in which it is made will indicate the 
states and character of those to whom it was 
originally given ; the substance of the Reve- 
lation will indicate the matter which was to be 
made known. Every Divine Revelation must 
therefore contain both genuine and apparent 
truths— truth as it is, and truth as it appears to 
those to whom it is revealed. The appearance 
does stand for a reality, just as do the falla- 
cies of the senses in man's relation to the 
world; and those who regard them in simplic- 
ity and regulate their conduct accordingly 
are clearly gainers. The appearances of 
truth in the letter of the Word simply indi- 
cate the states and character of man, to whom 
the genuine truth was thus accommodated; 
they are therefore the fallacious aspects of 
truths which only become falsities when they 
are confirmed as the real and only truth. 
The presence of such appearances does not 
argue the absence of a Divine reality, any 
more than the apparent rising of the sun ar- 
gues the absence of a law of planetary rota- 
tion. The Spiritual sense opens to us this 
Divine reality and genuine truth ; enables us 
to see the cause of its fallacious presentation 
in the letter; and removes all objection to its 



190 SPIRITUAL SENSE. 

Divine character arising from such appear- 
ances. We have applied this explanation in 
a former discourse to the wars of the Jews, 
and do not need to dwell upon it here. Once 
admit that the Israelites were chosen merely to 
represent the subjects belonging to the Church, 
and consider all the leading characters in the 
record as representatives and types, rather 
than patterns, and all difficulties arising from 
the questionable morality of some of them, 
disappears. We then see how the record may 
be essentially the Word of God, notwith- 
standing the craft imputed to the immediate 
founders of the nation their adherence to 
eastern manners in regard to the intercourse 
of the sexes, and the acts of violence and 
treachery committed. Granted these immor- 
alities, and even the apparent imputation of 
the Divine sanction; what then? It only 
shows that the Jews were not the subjects of 
a real church, possessing the inward principles 
of spiritual life, but only of the type of a, 
church — of a dispensation representing by 
external acts the operation of spiritual prin- 
ciples, in which they had no actual participa- 
tion. And when these spiritual principles 
are unfolded by the science of Correspond- 
ence, the record is seen notas offering a pattern 



SPIRITUAL SENSE. 191 

of conduct, but as a Divine mirror constructed 
from earthly materials for the reflection of the 
wisdom of heaven ; and the mirror passes from 
the thought in the contemplation of the glori- 
ous imao;e which it reflects. 

(4) As to infallibility. It is objected that 
whatever view is taken of the Scriptures, and 
in whatever way they may be held as being or 
containing the Word of God, they are not in- 
fallible. They do teach error, and they do 
mislead. They teach one set of doctrines to 
one class of men, and another to others. Thev 
hold out to the simple expectations which are 
continually disappointed, and must forever be 
impossible of fulfillment. Now, all that de- 
pends on w 7 hat you mean by infallible. If you 
mean that the Scriptures should contain no 
errors of history, or of science, or of dogmatic 
precept — that they should not only be free from 
false and fallacious representations, but that 
they should be able to prevent the possibility 
of mistake or misapprehension on the part of 
their readers, then we grant that the Scriptures 
are not infallible in such a sense. It is not 
possible, in the nature of the human mind, 
that any, even a Divine Communication, how- 
ever true in itself, can insure man against the 
misapprehension of its message. Nor is it pos- 



192 SPIRITUAL SENSE. 

sible that it could make itself in any way appre- 
hensible and secure man's attention and obedi- 
ence, without presenting many fallacious ap- 
pearances of truth in accomodation to his perver- 
ted understanding and perverse heart. Much 
less is it necessary that a Divine communication 
with a purely moral and spiritual purpose 
should be free from historical and scientific in- 
acuracy. But if by infallibility you mean what 
is perfectly and unerringly adapted for the ac- 
complishment of its own end, and that it will 
not mislead those who put their trust in it as 
a guide to that end ; then the Word is infallible 
indeed, and its infallibility proven by cen- 
turies of human experience, and multitudes of 
witnesses. That you do not find it infallible 
when judged by your scientific standards of 
truth is not strange, since it is not offered as a 
guide to such truth. That you should find it 
contradictory and misleading when you ap- 
proach it with minds pre-occupied with theories 
foreign to its purpose, or a skepticism that 
renders the reception of instruction impossible, 
is the result, not of anything in its own char- 
acter, but of your own mental state. But as 
a guide to righteousness, to those who seek it 
as a message from God, willing to learn and 
do what it teaches it is infallible, in that it is 



SPIRITUAL SEXSE. 193 

infinitely competent to the accomplishment of 
that end, and infinitely adapted to all human 
states, of all sorts and conditions, good or bad, 
wise or foolish. In this respect it is not only 
free from error, but is altogether above and 
beyond criticism. We do not say that the 
Scriptures carry upon their face the sciences 
of theology and pneumatology, any more 
than nature carries her sciences upon her sur- 
face; nor that they are able to preserve men 
from false conclusions from fallacious appear- 
ances ; but that the appearances of truth which 
the Scriptures present are precisely such as to 
best guide the life of the man to whom they 
appeal. Theological accuracy, even, is some- 
thing which the Scriptures do not profess to 
infallibly guarantee; and all objections to the 
Bible on this score of its fallibility, are di- 
rected against a dogmatic position of protest- 
ant Churches, and not any claim or profession 
which the Bible itself presents. This is true 
in fact of all the objections which I have no- 
ticed, as well as the many which I must 
pass over; — they avail nothing whatever 
against the Word of God as it is in itself, but 
only against the liter alistic interpretations 
and narrow sectarian claims which commonly 
prevail. 

13 



194 SPIRITUAL SENSE. 

Those who seek the bread of Life in the 
Scriptures find that its doctrines are doctrines 
of life. Their history and prophetic imagery 
are but the clothing of thought, and when we 
get at the thought we get knowledge and ex- 
perience of spiritual things, not natural; princi- 
ples of life and not merely definitions of belief. 
But all who ever did come to a knowledge of 
the inner things of Holy Scripture had to pass 
through many states, and in passing through 
them, to experience many changes. Things 
which seemed as enduring as the heavens and 
the earth, were, in the experience of those 
changes, found to be not enduring, but only 
intended to serve in their temporary continu- 
ance, things which are eternal. They have 
rested on some conception as in the very heart 
of truth, and then coming again into states of 
inquiry, have learned that their conception is 
only partial ; that there is greater breadth upon 
the commandment and unexplored instruction 
in the bosom of song or story. Mistakes have 
to be corrected, false notions dispelled, and the 
world of partial ideas in which they lived 
must pass away, both its heaven and its earth ; 
for our thoughts with respect to the Lord 
change as well as our thoughts of human duty. 
But in all these changes it is not the real truth 



SPIRITUAL SENSE. 195 

winch passes away. All that is real remains, 
and with this all that is new and true coal- 
esces — the Word of the Lord shall not pass 
away. 

So now in the Church, this which indi- 
viduals have often experienced, is taking 
place upon a larger scale. The heavens and 
earth of human interpretation are passing 
away, that it may be known that they are not 
the Word of the Lord, that endureth forever. 
The denial of the Spiritual sense of the Word, 
which is latent in the literal interpretations 
and naturalistic theories of Inspiration cur- 
rent in the churches, is itself the triumph of 
infidelity. It is thus that the letter kills. 
And doubtless in the Divine Providence, the 
skepticism which so often accompanies modern 
critical studies is being turned to use in the 
destruction and dissipation of those unworthy 
views and false interpretations, that the 
Church of the future may know and teach that 
" it is the Spirit that quickeneth." Because 
we believe that the day is at hand when the 
falsifications and perversions of the Word of 
God, to which the very Word itself is made 
subservient in the strongholds of so-called or- 
thodoxy, shall pass away ; when the dogmas, 
which are held in supremacy to the Word 



196 SPIRITUAL SENSE. 

from which they profess to be drawn, must be 
given up, willingly or unwillingly ; we, there- 
fore, offer you the intellectual help of the doc- 
trine of the Internal Sense and of the science 
of Correspondence, for the strengthening of 
your faith in the internal glory and Divinity 
of the Word. Be assured that if the Church 
is to arise with power, if faith is to con- 
tinue and exercise a power in the life of 
man and of society, the Word of God must 
be vindicated as the channel of truth eter- 
nal. This is the purport we believe of that 
prophetic vision of the river of life, proceeding 
out of the throne of God. You shall see if you 
improve your privileges, the self-attesting Di- 
vine truth issuing from the very heart of God, 
full of the power of His Life — a power which 
is not in words, nor in dogma, but in the in- 
breathed Spirit of Divine Life, transforming 
mind and heart. You will look in vain in his- 
tory and science, as such, for this power of life 
unto salvation; it is not even identified with the 
letter of law and precept, but is in them flowing 
out of the Divine fullness. You will find this 
spirit and life that quickeneth — not by looking 
at, but by looking through, the letter of Holy 
Scripture. And if you will use the means 
which by the mercy of the Lord, are at this day 



SPIRITUAL SEXSE. 197 

furnished in the restored doctrine of Corres- 
pondence, you may see and know intellectually 
and rationally this spiritual character and 
Divine sufficiency of the Word of God. " We 
testify that we do know/' for our eyes have seen 
what we would that you should see also, " that 
I may be comforted together with you, by the 
mutual faith both of you and me." Amen. 



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